Stephen M. Walt's (very) rough calculations estimate that just over 280,000 Muslims have been killed by Americans in the past thirty years, while slightly over 10,000 U.S. citizens have been killed by Muslims in the same time period. He actually writes Americans, but I am going to write from the assumption that he means U.S. citizens. This is an imbalance of great proportions, with the number of Muslims killed by Americans roughly 28 times higher. That is a lot of times! Compared to the number of Muslims killed by U.S. citizens, only 3.5% of that number of U.S. citizens has been killed by Muslims. I just can't stress how incredible the difference is here.
Nir Rosen also states a similar point very bluntly in an interview on Democracy Now!, from which I will quote directly: "stop supporting the dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and elsewhere, stop supporting the Pakistani dictatorship or quasi-dictatorship, stop supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Be perceived as a fair player in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Stop killing Muslims, and Muslims will not want to kill you. It’s really very easy. "
Nir Rosen is not alone in the matter either, as a very prominent (and controversial) thinker, who happens to be one of the most cited sources in arts and humanities academic papers, states the same basic idea.
The piece that really spurred me to write this blog post, however, is a bit more empirical. Based on facts and research rather than emotional appeals, a recent article in Foreign Policy calls for new approaches in reducing terrorism. It cites occupations, and (perceived?) religious differences as major sources of suicide bombings. I will not attempt to summarize the entire article here, since it is easy enough for you to clink the link and check it out for yourself, but seeing as how easy it is for emotions to push people toward illogical conclusions an actions which are inefficient in achieving stated goals I thought it would be good to draw attention to this.
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