Religion works in different ways: an intersectional approach to Muslims’ noninstitutionalized participation

Abstract

Although a growing body of research addresses the role of religion in the political engagement of Muslims, a dearth of studies scrutinizes whether intersecting power dynamics (i.e., gender and religion) shape Muslims’ political participation. In this study, we apply an intersectional approach to study whether religious indicators (mosque attendance, religious salience, and religious discrimination) shape the (gendered) participatory patterns of Muslims. Drawing on ESS data of six countries (Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, UK, and France), we find religious attendance to dampen and religious salience to heighten Muslims’ nonelectoral participation. Religious discrimination seems to have no effect. Although Muslims’ religiosity is gendered, our study finds no effects hereof on political participation. Further research unraveling the motivations of Muslims’ noninstitutionalized forms of participation is encouraged.

Appendix 1

Table 4 shows how (gendered) religious indicators and socio-demographical variables influence non-Muslims’ noninstitutionalized participation. First, the interaction Religious attendance x Gender indicates a small significant effect on participation, albeit at the 0.1 level whereas the religious attendance seems to slightly heighten the participation of non-Muslim men (B = 0.10, p < 0.01). The more salient religion is for men, the lower the likelihood to engage with nonelectoral participatory activities; however, again, the effect is small (B = − 0.06, p < 0.001). Interestingly, with regard to the socio-demographical variables, these variables all show the expected results according to Verba et al. (1993): the higher the resources (education and income) and political interest, the more likely to participate. Moreover, we find women and citizens born in the country to be more likely to participate in political activities. Lastly, again, we find country effects: non-Muslims in Germany (B = 0.28, p < 0.001) and France (B = 0.36, p < 0.001) participate more in nonelectoral activities compared with non-Muslims in Belgium whereas Italy shows a negative effect compared with Belgium (B = 0.84, p < 0.001).

Table 4 Logistic regression to explain non-Muslims’ gendered noninstitutionalized participation (N = 12,247)