The Middle East unsafe?

The explosion in a Cairo bazaar on Sunday promted discussions by students about the possibility of becoming involved in such an attack while studying abroad. Everywhere you look in the media--on the front page of a newspaper, in the attention grabbing sound bites of a television news broadcast, or listening to the hasty conclusions of a radio megalomaniac--one would assume that the Middle East is more dangerous than a prison without guards. As Chris Elliot, an international travel consultant, explains, "All you have to do is turn on your TV to find disturbing images of anti-American protests in the region, and it would be easy to assume that any country in that part of the world would present a danger to Western visitors." However, the truth is that, even for Americans, Cairo and most places in the Middle East are much safer than many U.S. cities.

Our nations capital is a great place to start. Depending on the crime, Washington, D.C. is 100 to 1,000 times more dangerous than Cairo. There are more murders a year in Washington than there are throughout the entire country of Egypt (Washington has already had 19 murders this year). The most likely crime to be a victim of in Cairo is pick-pocketing.

In addition to just cities, one would be safer in the Middle East than in the U.S. The total crime rate per-capita in the U.S. is 80.0645 per 1,000 people, which ranks 8th in the world! The closest MENA contender is Tunisia, which is ranked 40th, with 12.5634 crimes per 1,000 people. The United States witnessed over 16 thousand murders last year compared to Tunisia, which saw only 119. That comes to .042802 murders per 1,000 people in the U.S. and .0112159 per 1,000 people in Tunisia. In sum total and per-capita, murder occurres much more often in the United States. Many factors need to be examined in addition to data, but they do point to many interesting facts.

Most Americans (who are not Middle East scholars) would be surprised by these statistics. As a result of the media, which in turn reinforces consumer stereotypes and government propagation, the Middle East is looked at with fear and as a place to be avoided. These are the same stereotypes and ignorance that feed citizens with misconceptions who then support incompetent, erratic, and ineffective policies.

Iran Satellite Launch

To compare coverage of Iran's rocket launch on February 2nd, I examined reports from the New York Times and Al-Jazeera Engish. The New York times article was very extensive and included input from many experts (from Middle East experts to ballistics experts). It explained the story from many different angles, giving credit to Iran for accomplishing a feat, which few countries have done: "In the face of world opposition and sanctions, Iran has joined a very exclusive club."

It also addressed the major security concerns from many different perspectives. It included differing views suchs as, "Iran’s development of a space launch vehicle establishes the technical basis from which Iran could develop long-range ballistic missile systems," to, "the step represented no immediate military threat and no reason to rush the deployment of antimissile arms in Europe." The NYT article also included some detailed and technical information about the rocket as well as a brief history of Iran's rocket program.

On the contrary, Al-Jazeera's article was very short, not detailed, and was based on a single theme: fear. It did not mention the significance of Iran's actual technological accomplishment and gave no detail on the rocket or how advanced it was. The only perspective it gave on the security concerns was that the United States is very fearful of Iran's development.

It is true that the United States does not want Iran to have a more powerful rocket with warhead-carrying capabilities. However, the Al-Jazeera article missed the opinion of many that Iran is still far from posing a direct threat the United States and that it is still very limited in its abilities to threaten the West in general. Overall, the Al-Jazeera article was not very informative and was unprofessional. One would expect a more complete analysis, particularly from a news source in the region with as much clout as Al-Jazeera.