The Prevalence of Islamic Violence in the Middle East

http://omeka.lib.fsu.edu/files/original/730b2d912d4ba45e0436bf863760d076.pdf

PDF of essay about Islamic Violence in the Middle East

Nathan Farrell REL 1300

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, and the recent violence associated with the Islamic State has been pinned by much of the western world as deriving from the Quran. Such an association must be looked at more closely to see where the more likely sources of violence in the Middle East are coming from. Several factors must be looked at, including the types of people that are recruited into Islamic extremist’s groups, the economic and political stability of the regions where religious violence is prevalent, and how the western world’s view has been shaped by the information they are fed.

Prisoners in modern society are found to be a primary recruitment hotbed for the Islamic state. Along with the fact that followers can be bred and easily manipulated within prison to follow such a violent view of Islam is concerning but also enlightening to how these extremist groups find followers. Along with this the western world’s textbooks are shown to show a heavy skew towards associating Islam with terror, as a large part of the coverage of the religion has to do with the discussion of terror. In addition, it must be remembered that religious extremism has always existed, and it must be seen that the true cause of violent fanaticism is not the religion itself but people who are already predisposed to commit such acts.