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Does Islam Cause Violence in the Middle East? Essay

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Since the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, a large focus of the Western Powers, like the United States, has been on the Middle East. Out of this has come a conclusion that this area of the world is prone to be more violent than other parts and this is largely to due to the Islamic religion. This the West has concluded in large part through observation coupled with some qualitative data. However, is this an adequate assertion of the area, and of the religion of Islam? To begin various types of violence will be explored quantitatively and qualitatively to see if there is a difference in the level of violence seen in the Middle East as compared to Western States. Once it has been determined if there exists a difference in …show more content…

He states that the acts of violence in the Middle East have not been following the same decreasing pattern as seen by the rest of the world. To show this he employs a couple of methods. One of which he compares the number of interstate conflicts with the number of Islamic conflicts. By this graph, it can be clearly seen that since the 1990s, the number of interstate conflicts has been decreasing, but the number of Islamic conflicts has not. With the use of this data, he shows that the Middle East has not been following the trends of less violence as compared with the rest of the world (Pinker, 2011, pg 364-368). However, is this data alone to say that the Middle East is more violent? There are a number of issues need to be looked at besides conflict. One such issue that can be quantified is homicide rates. In comparing homicide rates from the Middle East with other Western States. Data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) from the years 1999-2011 shows these results:
There are a few issues with this data as it is difficult to get data and accurate date from this region due to the nature of some of the governments, however with what is provided there is enough to make a clear assumption. In this data, it can be seen that while a small number Middle Eastern States did see a decline in homicide the majority of them saw little to no change. One last issue is the number of

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