Michael Zehef-Bibeau, a recent Muslim convert, attacked the Canadian Parliament Wednesday in a possible attempt to get to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was in a meeting of legislators in the building at the time. Clearly, jihad isn’t far from home, and that’s a threat greater than Ebola.

Zehef-Bibeau was killed by the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms in a dramatic shootout caught on video, but it’s possible he wasn’t working alone. Authorities are pursuing possibly two other suspects. Before attacking Parliament, Zehef-Bibeau killed a Canadian soldier, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, at the National War Memorial.

Wednesday’s incident wasn’t the only one in Canada this week. On Monday, a jihadi named Martin Rouleau drove his car into two Canadian soldiers, killing one, in a mall parking lot near Montreal. Rouleau was killed after a car chase and shootout.

The prime minister was scheduled yesterday to honor Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived a Taliban assassination attempt. Was the timing of Wednesday’s attack more than coincidence? Or perhaps both attacks were in response to Canadian participation in military operations against ISIL.

Regardless, these fanatics don’t need to be specifically directed by al-Qaida or ISIL. This new face of lone-wolf jihad is an immediate threat to the West precisely because of its homegrown nature.

As noted by Mark Alexander in his column, Islamic Jihad – Target USA, “Despite assurances to the contrary from our nation’s commander in chief, it turns out that global Jihad is thriving. According to those who do not bend the truth to comport with political agendas, Jihad now constitutes a greater threat to our nation’s security than at any time in history. Obama’s retreat from Iraq left a vacuum for the resurgence of a far more dangerous incarnation of Muslim terrorism under the ISIL label, which has displaced al-Qa'ida as the dominant asymmetric Islamic terrorist threat to the West.”

Alexander continues, “Islamic terrorist groups are surging worldwide, including Khorasan (a.k.a. al-Qa'ida), Jabhat al-Nusra (a.k.a. al-Qa'ida), Boko Haram, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Muslim Brotherhood and now, front and center, ISIL, a.k.a. the Islamic State – all of which together constitute Jihadistan, that borderless nation of Islamic extremists aligned under the Qur'anic umbrella.”

Alexander noted further, “Of course, the most likely near-term form of attack on our turf, against military and civilian personnel, will be similar to the conventional Islamist assaults in the Middle East – homicidal bombings or mass shootings. This type of attack is low tech, but effective in terms of achieving terrorist goals to extort policy change by instilling mass pubic fear.” And he cautioned, “Government and media analysts alike, will assert that there is ‘no known connection between the assailant and Islamist terrorist groups,’ [as they did in the Islamist attacks at Ft. Hood and the Boston Marathon]. That assertion is patently false.”

Alexander concluded, “Clearly these attacks and those to come, were and will be connected to worldwide Jihad, by way of the Qur'an, the foundational fabric connecting Islamist attacks. Describing the assailants as "lone wolf” actors or “radicalized,” constitutes a lethal misunderstanding of the Jihadi threat.“

> Update: It is no small irony that Obama’s introduction of his new "Ebola czar” was interrupted by questions about the Islamic attacks in Canada – given that he hopes Ebola will be the Democrat’s “good crisis” diversion, from voter focus on Obama’s foreign policy failures. Obama said the incident “emphasizes the degree to which we have to remain vigilant when it comes to dealing with these kinds of acts of senseless violence or terrorism.” He asserted, “And I pledged, as always, to make sure that our national security teams are coordinating very closely.” Don’t you feel much better now?