We identify with France, don't we? The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral, Normandy, the French Riviera, wine, romance and on and on.
Most recently, the terrorist attacks on the satirical magazine that left 12 dead. Je Suis, Charlie Hebdo, eh?
Nigeria, even though it's Africa's most populous country and has its largest economy, we don't think much about. There's oil there, it has a good national soccer team and there's a surprisingly large film industry. What's also there, especially in the northern half of the country, is the Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group that is threatening to overthrow the country of 175 million and create an Islamic state.
To date, according to President Goodluck Jonathan, the Islamic extremists have killed more than 10,000 people, crippled thousands more and control territory about the size of Belgium with 1.7 million people.
France, though many of its police regulars don't carry guns, has managed to find and kill three of the terrorists who perpetrated the recent attack. Nigeria, on the other hand, has a corrupt military and can't seem to mount a sustained coordinated response.
Boko Haram's original name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad." The more well-known name given it by residents in the city where it had its headquarters, loosely translated from the region's Hausa language, means "Western education is forbidden."
Founded in 2002, it launched military operations in 2009. It is strongest in the northern Nigeria states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and has expanded its operations into the neighboring countries of Niger and Cameroon. It is the same group that attacked two boarding schools last spring, abducting more than 200 schoolgirls during the second raid and declaring it would treat them as slaves and marry them off.
Its early attacks came from gunmen on motorcycles, but it graduated to bombings, assassinations and the aforementioned kidnappings. In a recent attack, a 10-year-old girl was used to detonate a bomb. The group targets both civilians and the military, clerics and politicians, but especially Christians (who make up 50.5 percent of the Nigerian people).
Boko Haram's followers, according to the BBC, are said to be influenced by the Quranic phrase which says: "Anyone who is not governed by what Allah has revealed is among the transgressors." Its version of Islam makes it "haram," or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity -- voting in elections, wearing shirts and slacks, or receiving a secular education, for example -- associated with Western society.
This, indeed, is what the Western world is up against with Islamic terrorists, whether they be ISIS, Boko Haram or individuals acting on behalf of other al-Qaeda groups. They're clearly not in touch with the world of 2015, are never defeated when thousands of their members are killed and will brook no deviation from what they believe their religion teaches.
The Obama administration, which goes to great pains not to use the words "Islamic extremists" to describe the self-proclaimed Islamic terrorists of any group, hasn't shown much love to the Nigerian government in its efforts to fight off Boko Haram.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State John Kerry have been dismissive of the threat, the former saying the organization was not motivated by religion and the latter expressing concern that "Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations [that] fuel extremism."
Obama, himself, has been reluctant to associate Islam even with the Islamic State, the Fort Hood murders and Benghazi.
The administration took brief notice when the Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped last spring but quickly pivoted from that glance.
However, it's not up to Obama and the United States to make the situation right in the African country. It will take a coordinated effort from the country's own government, which has its problems, together with other nations, but a recent uptick in violence by Boko Haram should convince Western countries that Islamic extremism is no idle threat.
It's growing, it wants to be -- and may be -- where each of them are, and it won't stop until it gets what it wants.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have said it best in an address to his country: "The international jihadist movement has declared war on Western civilization, and whether we like it or not, it is not going away and we must confront it."