The Middle East region (and Egypt in North Africa) is considered to be rife with religious tension. Proponents of this view argue that this is so because religion constitutes a significant part of the political culture in the Middle East and in particular, in states with a Muslim religious tradition. However, more generally, a 2009 comparative study (Akbaba 2009) of religious discrimination in western democracies, Asia and the Middle East for the time period of 1990-2004 found that religious discrimination is not, on average, more prevalent in the Middle East than in Asia, and that states with Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu majorities all display similar levels of religious discrimination. However, the study does find that even though the Middle East and Asia have similar values of average discrimination, the range between minimum and maximum values is broader for the Middle East.
