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Violence Numbers in the Middle East

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While the rest of the world appears to be seeing decreasing levels of violence, it appears the Middle East has yet to experience this same trend. The past couple of decades have seen either a decrease in violence and types of violence that the West has not experienced for a time. This then brings the questions, is the Middle East more violent or is nothing more than Islamophobia. One way to answer this question is to look at the numbers. In Pinker's, The Better Angels of our Nature, 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. 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. These include other types of violence. A type of violence that can be quantified is homicide rates. In comparing homicide rates from the Middle East with other areas of the world like Western powers of the United States, Canada, and England an interesting set of date emerge. Data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) from the years 1999-2011 will be used. United States 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Rate 5.6 5.5

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