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The Crisis of Moral Decline in Iraqi Society

Following years of violence and despotic rule, Iraqis have lost a sense of moral responsibility toward society, something that must urgently be addressed to provide security and reach lasting solutions.
A man looks at a car on fire at the site of a bomb attack in Baghdad October 7, 2013. Bombs exploded across the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 22 people, police said. Five of the six blasts were in mainly Shi'ite Muslim districts, but there was also an explosion in the predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Doura.  REUTERS/Ahmed Saad (IRAQ - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTX142ZK
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After Immanuel Kant decisively put an end to metaphysics in his work The Critique of Pure Reason, he nevertheless returned to it once again in an attempt to mold it into a basis for social ethics, which he believed could not endure without religiosity. But events in Iraq today prove that there is no necessary correlation between religiosity and morality in social behavior.

According to polling by Gallup, Iraq is one of the most religious societies in the world, with about 84% of Iraqis professing devotion to one faith or another. Despite this, reports from a wide variety of sources indicate that Iraq has been experiencing a sharp rise in crime rates, the lion’s share of which is unconnected to the country’s sectarian crisis. Indeed, the primary motive appears to be driven by the desire to obtain money, or other criminal goals. In addition, those directly involved in terrorist operations are often no more than mercenaries acting on behalf of opposition sides seeking to extort wealth.

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