Contemporary terrorism is disproportionately Islamist. In a recent book I reported that between 1994 and 2008, the world suffered 204 high-casualty terrorist bombings. Islamists were responsible for 125, or 61 percent of these incidents, which accounted for 70 percent of all deaths. . . .People are so confusing.
One explanation we can rule out is that Muslims are violent people. Predominantly, Muslim countries average 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people, compared to 7.5 in non-Muslim countries. The percentage of the society that is made up of Muslims is an extraordinarily good predictor of a country’s murder rate. More authoritarianism in Muslim countries does not account for the difference. I have found that controlling for political regime in statistical analysis does not change the findings. More Muslims, less homicide.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Islam and Violence
Steven Fish:
Islamic terrorist violence isn't that complicated.
ReplyDeleteMost Muslims live in Asia, a region of the world heavily exploited and ravaged by Christian European interests over the past few centuries. The forces of Nationalism, Imperialism, Colonialism, and all the rest created massive and chronic suffering among many Islamic regions of the world.
The West built for itself a monstrous reputation in the eyes of the local populations of Islamic Asia, and an arguably well deserved one. This only served to widen and reinforce the ideological rift between Christian Europe and Muslim Asia.
And so today, in some of the poorest, most war-torn, most volatile, most miserable parts of the world, where local conditions are obviously and demonstrably the result of Western interference and manipulation, is it any wonder that the incensed locals turn to violence against those they perceive as their tormentors?
When "America", "NATO", and "The European Union" are associated chiefly with concepts like bombs, foreign-backed dictators or military regimes, and at-any-cost oil extraction, is it any wonder that angry, futureless young men are drawn to radical movements which paint these rapacious and greedy outsiders who dress, speak, eat, and worship completely differently as being the servants of The Shayṭān ?