Last week, bombs ripped through the prime minister's office in Algeria, destroying tentative peace and killing at least 33 people. Around that same time, three suicide bombers blew themselves up and a fourth was shot by police in Casablanca. What did these people have in common? They were all Islamists.

It seems that in the past few weeks, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have resurfaced after a somewhat dormant couple of months. The bombings in Algeria are said to have been the worst since 2002, when a bomb detonated in a suburb injured 80 people and killed 38. For a while, the country had been trying to contain the Islamic insurgency that had killed hundreds of thousands of people.

It saddens and embarrasses me to read news like this. I'm a Muslim woman who has a lot of faith, and even though these insurgents and terrorists have a completely misguided and perverted outlook on their religion, they are, after all, Muslim. That upsets me because they have completely ruined the entire world's outlook on Islam.

I have had the opportunity to speak to many people who know absolutely nothing about the religion and the people that do know a little, learned what they know from reading about Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I find this embarrassing because these religious groups completely misrepresent what Islam stands for. Okay, before I go off on a tangent, I'll get back to Algeria. Until very recently, the nation seemed to have a strong hold on their peace efforts by staging many military crackdowns. Unfortunately, last year the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, the most effective armed group remaining in Algeria, took on the name of Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa and began to target foreigners. The recent bombings were, as I said before, the worst the nation has seen in a while.

Meanwhile, in the not-so-distant Casablanca, police are frustrated at the recent increase in the number of suicide bombers. It seems that every terrorist now wears an explosive belt to prevent capture. This obviously serves as an obstacle for the Moroccan police, who have been unable to capture anyone alive.

Clearly, terrorism is on the rise. More and more people are being drawn to the Al-Qaeda cause (whatever that may be) and the world seems to be losing the war on terrorism. In times of chaos and disorder, people flock to extremes for support and stability. For example, the Taliban were able to take over Afghanistan with little to no public resistance because the nation had been in shambles since the cold war. With war and fighting ensuing in places such as Balochistan, Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq and a plethora of other places, I wonder whether the terrorists will come out stronger in the end. I don't know about you, but this idea freaks me out. I grew up believing that good always triumphs over evil, that the wicked witch always dies at the end. But, with the way things are going right now, I really am not sure that peace and harmony will prevail. I guess we have no choice but to wait it out and hope to God that, in the end, all the people that have died in this global war did not die in vain.