The Multidimensional Impact of Islamic Religiosity on Ethno-religious Social Tolerance in the Middle East and North Africa

Religiosity and Tolerance in the MENA 1693 Religiosity and Tolerance in the MENA The Multidimensional Impact of Islamic Religiosity on Ethno-religious Social Tolerance in the Middle East and North Africa thno-religious tolerance is crucial for establishing sustainable democracy, which is scarce in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This study provides an empirically grounded and nuanced critique of Orientalist studies simply pointing at Islam. It presents a systematic analysis of the impact of religious belonging, belief, and behavior on social tolerance in the MENA, based on 32 uniquely synchronized Arab Barometer and World Values surveys. This study’s major contributions are that it (a) provides unique empirical insights into the multifaceted impact of religiosity on social tolerance in the region, (b) develops the 3-Bs approach to a context-sensitive framework, and (c) shows that and explains why Islam has both negative and positive influences. The analyses show (i) that the degree to which people identify with their religion has no negative impact on social tolerance, with exception of the few cases in which Islamist forces hold power; (ii) that under “normal” circumstances orthodox-literalist believers are more tolerant towards others, but less so if they feel repressed or threatened in society (which only holds for a few cases); and (iii) that mosque attendance has a negative impact on ethno-religious social tolerance, and this effect is particularly strong if conservative Islamist states coercively regulate religion and its content, such as communication via sermons. All things considered the multifaceted 3-B approach is found to hold well once the MENA-specific aspects and its diverse society-state-religion relations are incorporated as sources of both possible threats and socialization. E .................................................................................................................. Introduction Recent work shows that the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath dealt a heavy blow to ethno-religious social tolerance across the region (Spierings 2017). This is worrisome not just because of the decline in tolerance itself, but also because of tolerance’s importance for sustainable democracy in general (Lipset 1959; Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti 1994; Sullivan and Transue 1999) and .................................................................................................................. The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO 451-15-006). Address correspondence to Dr Niels Spierings, Radboud University, Department of Sociology | Radboud Social and Cultural Research, Thomas van Aquinostraat 6.01.36, 6525 GD Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 243612037; e-mail: .................................................................................................................. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals. Social Forces 97(4) 1693–1730, June 2019 doi: 10.1093/sf/soy092 Advance Access publication on 11 October 2018 Niels Spierings, Radboud University—Radboud Social Cultural Research .................................................................................................................. 1694 Social Forces 97(4) democratic support in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in particular (Ciftci 2010; Rizzo, Abdel-Latif, and Meyer 2007; Tessler 2002). While Islam has gotten much scholarly attention in explaining explicit support for democracy (e.g., Fish 2002; 2011; Moaddel 2002; Rizzo, Abdel-Latif, and Meyer 2007; Spierings 2014; Tessler 2002), its impact is largely absent from the MENA literature discussing ethno-religious tolerance (i.e., the willingness to live in the same locale as people with a different ethno-religious background). There are some studies that touch on related issues, though. Based on indepth interviews in Oman, Al Sadi and Basit (2013, 447) actually conclude that youngsters’ religion is crucial in determining their tolerance for people with different worldviews. Spierings (2014) also finds that religious identification has clear but different effects in five MENA countries, but he leaves out religiosity’s behavioral dimension and does not address context dependency in depth. So while there are clear indications that religiosity matters, the impact of different behavioral and attitudinal dimensions of religion (see Kellstedt et al. 1996; Scheepers, Gijsberts, and Hello 2002; Stark and Glock 1968) has not yet been thoroughly theorized or systematically studied for the MENA region (cf. Ciftci 2010; Spierings 2014). To theorize the relationship between religiosity and tolerance in the MENA, I apply the three-Bs perspective—the three Bs referring to the distinction between religious Belonging, Belief, and Behavior as different explanatory dimensions— which has already proven to help understand the complex influence of religiosity on other topics (Kellstedt et al. 1996; Smidt, Kellstedt, and Gudt 2009; Wald and Wilcox 2006). It allows me to theorize the differential impact of these three dimensions in the MENA. As such, this study assesses whether insights from the Western-oriented literature on the religiosity–tolerance linkage are generalizable to the MENA context, and under what conditions. Also, by considering Islamic religiosity in a multidimensional way, this study provides an empirically informed critique of civilizationist and Orientalist studies that present Islam as a singularly (negative) driver of liberal political attitudes (e.g., Huntington 1996; Norris and Inglehart 2012; Yuchtman-Yaar and Alkalay 2007). Moreover, such Orientalist studies essentialize the MENA region to one homogenous bloc of “Islamic countries” (cf. Spierings 2015), while there is substantial macro-level diversity in society–state–religion relations across the MENA (e.g., Fox 2013, 2015; Owen 2004). The latter insight, however, has not yet been translated to micro-level studies. In this study, I acknowledge and utilize the differences among MENA countries by actually theorizing and showing how this diversity in society–state–religion relations shapes religiosity’s impact on ethno-religious tolerance at the individual level (cf. Fox 2013, Chapter 6). Empirically, this study is based on thirty-two synchronized Arab Barometer and World Value surveys for thirteen countries, the years ranging from 2001 to 2014. Using pooled multilevel regression models, I estimate the general relationships between religiosity dimensions and social tolerance. Moreover, I apply multilevel models with cross-level interactions as well as country-disaggregated ana (...truncated)