Middle East Upheavals Driven more by Politics than Religion

TODAY

09 March 2016

Saleena Saleem

Those who claim Muslims are unusually inclined to violence often cite the late Samuel Huntington’s claim that Muslim societies are more “bloody” than others because they experience more intrastate violence.

But American political scientist M Steven Fish dispels Huntington’s unsupported claim through rigorous quantitative analysis of data between 1946 and 2007.

In his book Are Muslims Distinctive?, Dr Fish finds no evidence that countries with a larger share of Muslims experience disproportionate acts of mass political violence. In fact, Dr Fish notes that when it comes to violent crime such as murder, Muslim-majority countries have consistently low rates compared with Christian-majority countries.

Such facts get lost when the focus is on the Muslim extremists who commit the majority of violent political and terrorist acts on a global scale today.

… Saleena Saleem is an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Related topics will be discussed at an upcoming RSIS conference on “Islam in the Contemporary World” on April 28.

Categories:

IDSS / Print / Online