Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot
JIhadi John executing dual US-Israeli citizen Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist he beheaded last summer.

Beware! Beheading is rapidly becoming the new fashion method for terrorists. The Islamic State’s methods are spreading very quickly to other geographic arenas in the Middle East and Africa.

In the past couple of weeks we have heard about cases of beheading in numerous other countries. There have been such cases reported in Lebanon, in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and in Nigeria as well, the latter carried out by the Boko Haram group who kidnapped hundreds of Christian girls for slaves several months ago.

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Unfortunately the media – especially the social media – has no doubt played a major role in exporting the idea of beheading from Iraq and Syria to other parts of the world.

Reports of the incidents zip around the world with each new beheading, although such barbaric methods are not new. Journalist James Foley was not the first victim. And journalist Steve Sotloff, a Jewish Israeli-American dual citizen who hid both his Judaism and his Israeli citizenship, just joined his beheaded colleague.

We have already seen what Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi did to Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. We saw what happened to British soldier Lee Rigby in the streets of London.

Now, I am afraid, beheading has become a fashion; an acceptable, legitimate, ‘regular’ method of jihad.

The Western silence is shocking. Everyone says it is “there” and not “here.” “Who cares about ‘them’?” “Let them kill each other.”

Where are the demonstrations against the beheading of the Yazidis? Where is the support for the Christians in Nigeria? Where are all the moderate Muslims? Why don’t we hear their condemnation of this ‘fashion’ of beheading?

The world is sleep-walking!!

Be warned: if the world continues to simply bat helplessly away in deafening silence, beheading will become a fashion in “our” place as well. If will cross continents and oceans, and no place will remain immune.

Wake up before it’s too late. I hope and pray I am wrong; but I fear that I am only too right.

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Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs, and is an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.