The world of the past 20 years can be viewed in the context of successive major terror attacks on the West, starting with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2005 attacks on the London transportation system, the Paris attacks in 2015 and most recently the deadly attack on Brussels, Belgium.

Make no mistake: Islamic extremists are waging a war on the West, with Europe in particular under fire most recently. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that they only target Western nations.

Margaret Wente of the Canadian Globe and Mail well described the threat to the Middle East’s Christian population: “Apologists for extremism like to argue that Islamists hate us for good reason. They attack the West because of the awful things the West has done to them, and because Europe has miserably failed to integrate its Muslim population. But they also kill the infidels next door. It is clarifying to keep in mind that Islamist hatred is not confined to us. Its real motive is the logic of fanaticism” (“Islamic Extremists Don’t Just Hate the West,” March 29, 2016).

Further proof that Islamic extremism is not borne out of a struggle against foreign threats or mere political fervor is the fact that terrorists frequently leave scores of their fellow countrymen and fellow Muslims dead in their brutal attacks. This is because the roots of Islamic extremism don’t lie in politics or geopolitical tension. They lie instead in biblical history and what Scripture foretold would come. You can read about and understand the astonishing story in our free study guide The Middle East in Bible Prophecy. (Source: The Globe and Mail.)