HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Aug. 1, 2005 Here is an interesting comment from the University of Texas: “The fact is that the actual incidence of violence in Egypt is very rare: Cairo is a much safer city than any of the major cities in Europe or the United States. The annual murder rate in the city of Washington, DC, a city of just over 600,000 people, tends to be about as high as the murder rate in the entire country of Egypt -- a country of just over 60,000,000 people -- over a ten year period. That means that the murder rate is over one thousand times less in Egypt than it is in Washington, DC, and yet there is still a perception that Egypt is dangerous.” This observation tends to agree with statistics from other sources. Official US figures for murders in Washington over the past fifteen years have fluctuated from about 40 to 80 per 100,000 per year, while UN figures for Egypt show a rate of around 0.5 per 100,000. This implies that murder is 80 to 160 times as prevalent on a per-capita basis in Washington as in Egypt as a whole. I could not find a specific murder rate for Cairo, but UT’s comment suggests that it is comparable to or even lower than the national murder rate. But, although whether Egypt is 100 times or 1000 times as safe as Washington may be debatable, it’s certain that you can feel much more confident walking around the streets in Egypt during the day or at night. It can only be supposed that rates for other crimes follow the same pattern. One might also consider offenses on the street that are less than criminal, like insults, taunts and lewd remarks, which are much more common in the US than in Egypt. I tell this to Americans again and again, but they simply cannot grasp that Egypt is not what they have been taught to think it is. Most Americans have never been in Egypt, and so derive their erroneous notions from media accounts without ever even suspecting that the news with respect to Egypt is manipulated with political design to create an atmosphere of hatred and contempt for Egyptians, other Arabic-speaking people and Islam generally. Even those Americans who have visited Egypt have for the most part gone on brief guided tours with no genuine contact with the locals. I was gratified that, when I posted my article, “I Love Alexandria, Egypt”, I received e-mail from a non-Egyptian lady resident in Alexandria assuring me that the people there were still quite as amiable and affable as they were 15 years ago, when I lived there for a while. Undoubtedly, the same could be said of Cairo. It is the simple good nature of most Egyptians that makes for their low crime rates. The contrastive murder rates in the two capitals are not due to economic, political or religious differences. It’s strictly a racial matter, the black population being very high in Washington and very low in Cairo. But Americans seem reluctant to face up to the facts of life in the US, preferring to supervise other countries instead. Sensational news coverage of occurrences like the recent bombing in Egypt, in which Egyptian authorities suspect Israeli complicity in any case, obscures the fact that, all in all, ordinary Egyptians are very peace-loving people. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
