Jihad in Jersey City ?

The shooting of five police officers in Jersey City, leading to the death of one, appeared in a new light to me after I read a gently worded NY Times article yesterday that, typical of the Times, buried the lead. The article focused on Amanda Anderson, the 21 year killed along with gunman Hassian Hosendove, a/k/a Hassan Shakur.

The article had a gloppy-romantic lead :

Like the female counterpart in Bonnie and Clyde, Amanda G. Anderson was a faithful accomplice in crime, who ran from the law with her man and remained at this side in shootouts until the very end.

The article yammered on about how "sweet and quiet" Anderson was, how much fun she had with ex-con Shakur and how he wanted her to convert to Islam.

Other news reports gave more details on Skakur’s record and the role of religion in his life. Consider this story, which says,

Jersey City Police Director Sam Jefferson said the pair might have been expecting a confrontation.

“If he got caught by police,” Hosendove said, “he was not going to surrender.”

Hosendove said despite the drugs and guns, her brother, whose given name was Hassan Hosendove, was a devout Muslim and loving father to two children in South Carolina from a previous relationship. As part of his religion, he legally changed his name to Shakur.

Now the story gets interesting. the article says,

Ms. Anderson wore a Muslim headscarf, and kept a low profile. Recordings of what neighbors believed was Koran recitation came from the apartment.

All the articles I’ve read treat this as a shoot-out with a murderous thug, but I wonder if something else was at play. Did this "devout Muslim and loving father" have visions of 72 virgins in his head when he started gunning down Jersey City cops ? What’s the real story here ?