Based on the number of countries involved, the war between Islamists and the rest of the world has surpassed the scope of World War II.

In Thailand police stations are overrun by Muslim extremists; in Mali the government was temporarily toppled by them; Yemen is, as a result of Islamists, ungovernable. In Syria,Japanese hostages are killed by Islamists, and a Jordanian pilot is burned alive. Boko Haram is fighting, not only in Nigeria, but is also engaged in battle with almost all the neighboring countries. Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Benin want to join forces to fight against Boko Haram. Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon have already accepted refugees in their millions and are seeking with despairing hearts to prevent an ISIS attack on their lands which would lead them to get directly involved in the war.

Turkey is wandering in the direction of Islamism and is supporting Islamists in Syria, while a dictatorship such as Uzbekistan and a democracy such as Albania are successfully resisting the influence of Islamists in their lands. Citizens from almost 100 countries are fighting as Islamic terrorists in Syria, Iraq, or other crisis spots such as Mali, Yemen, or Afghanistan. In opposition to them, 6o countries of the world are directly or indirectly fighting against ISIS in Syria/Iraq. Jews from numerous countries are wondering if they should move to Israel because of Islamist terrorism, recently especially discussed in France and Denmark due to the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen.

I could easily continue this list. Hardly a country in the world, at least no continent, has remained protected from Islamist terrorism. (Australia and Latin America are the least involved, but even they are not completely free of the problem.)

The Islamists, even though they are not united with each other, have engaged the entire world in a war, a “World War.” Stated otherwise, the “World War” of the Islamists involves more countries than any previous world war. It is only the number of victims that remains smaller than in World War I or World War II.

This leads to two implications:

1. The problem of Islamist violence will not be solved if every country in the world seeks to solve the problem only on the national level within its own borders. We need an international strategy shared by all countries, though, of course, those countries which are either secretly or openly supporting extremist Islam present a special problem. And all countries which are fighting against Islamic extremism must consider their various problems and differences of opinion as secondary within an international strategy.
2. The problem of Islamist violence will not be solved if we only seek national solutions for each country that has become ungovernable because of Islamism, such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, or Syria. Such merely national solutions are also insufficient for those countries that are heavily involved in Islamic extremism, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan.

The world needs a unified global strategy against the global threat coming from the most massive terrorist threat and movement the world has ever seen: Islamist terrorism.

Tags: Bremen, Christianity, Islam, Koranverbrennung, Krieg, Medienberichterstattung, Presse, Weltkrieg