The brutal terrorist attack in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall [Sept. 21] may have put terrorism in Africa back in the headlines, but the truth is that it never really left the headlines over the past few years. The difference is that it was usually limited to local, African headlines. Only an incident of this magnitude, with multiple casualties in an ostensibly “Western” mall in an African state that was relatively “organized” could capture front pages and open news broadcasts around the world, at least for a short time.

Soon the Kenyans will finally take control of the situation (which has already lasted many long days), and this no-man’s-land of global terrorism in Africa will retreat to its natural setting, in the back pages of the Western media, where it receives little, if any, attention. We try to ignore what is happening there, in Africa, as if the whole region doesn’t affect us. We try to “sweep it under the rug” and hide it in the same place that we sweep everything we don’t want to see. But it is there. It’s alive and kicking, shooting and killing and blowing things up.

It is important to look at the incident in Kenya from a more global perspective. The ground is shaking in Africa. There are tremors throughout the continent, and they are not limited to Africa either.

Take Tunisia, for instance. Its own revolution was ostensibly quiet, and an ostensibly moderate Islamist party is now in power there. Nevertheless, we are starting to see the beginnings of radical Salafist Islamic terrorism. The Arabic word salaf means “past,” as in “past tense.” It refers to the idea of restoring Islam to its sources, or rather to its earliest beginnings, when it was “pure” and unconstrained by any outside influences. Salafists regard themselves as the original Muslims, purer than all others. This sometimes connects to extreme acts of terror unlike anything ever seen before.