'Coming to a mall near you' Islamic State threatens shopping malls and other public places around the world

Syria and Iraq are not the only home for these Islamists

The Islamic State is not a problem for Syria, Iraq or their neighbors. Its reach has spread, with affiliated groups popping up in northern Africa and lone wolves operating on its behalf in Europe and North America, and it now poses a massive threat to the West.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The Islamic State has set up in Libya, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Algeria and Tunisia, and even in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, as part of the group's end strategy, to take control as the Islamic world and wage all out war against the West.

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One counter-terrorism analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, Harleen Gambhir, told the Daily Mail that the Islamic State's new splinter groups are being used to cause damage in places where their own military forces can't.

"What we've started to see is ISIS has begun to accelerate its operation to activate these sleeper groups that its reaching out to and it's having international effects," she said.

While this influence is normally non-evident, the attacks in Canada, France and the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Egypt are the most recent and quantifiable expression of the Islamic State's ability.

Libya's close distance to Europe and its site as a central hub in North Africa make the Islamic State's presence there extremely worrying.

Ethan Chorin, the Chief Executive of Perim Associates, and African legal consultant firm, told MailOnline that: "There is real concern that dynamics in Libya could destabilize neighboring states like Algeria which, like Egypt, has had a long and particularly violent battle with extremism."

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While the actual power the Islamic State has outside of Syria and Iraq is debatable, those fighting them on the ground also have issues.

The CIA has reported that the Islamic State has about 31,500 fighters, including thousands from Europe and North America. However, a Kurdish commander on the ground believes that this number is much larger, about 200,000 he told the Independent during an interview on February 22.

Through world-wide propaganda, ISIS is spreading messages, calling on people to attack their own country. Areas with high traffic, like malls, are the most recent targets.

According to ABC News, a "76-minute propaganda video [was] posted online Saturday, [where] an al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab urged Western followers to strike in their home countries with attacks like the one targeting a popular mall in Kenya two years ago," that left 67 dead.

Minnesota's Mall of America was the mentioned mall for attack.

At this point, ISIS is able to penetrate every country with their propaganda videos.

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