Understanding the (Varying) Impact of Secularism and Religiosity on Tolerance and Trust among the Publics of 15 MENA Countries

While the literature on religion and politics in the MENA acknowledges that a better understanding of religious tolerance is needed, MENA public opinion studies have given little systematic attention to question of how individual-level secularism and Islamic religiosity relate to people’s religious tolerance and interpersonal trust, and the small but existing MENA literature on micro-level tolerance and trust suffers from several problems: (1) it present a simplistic understanding of secularist attitudes and Islamic religiosity; (2) while outcomes vary considerably no explanation for these differences is provided; and (3) the impact of institutional differences on the relationship between secularism/Islamic religiosity and tolerance/trust is largely neglected. In this paper, I further theorize and empirically assess the impact of different dimensions of religiosity on ethno-religious tolerance and interpersonal trust across MENA countries. The theoretical framework conceptualizes individual-level secularism and religiosity in terms of belonging, commitment, participation, social orthodoxy, and political orthodoxy. Theorizing the impact of each dimension will including thinking through how their impact might depend on the religious cleavages in society, the institutional secularism and Islamism, and the shape and outcome of the uprisings in the respective countries and times. For instance, studies suggest that MENA Muslim citizens are less tolerant than citizens holding other beliefs, which is ascribed to their religion. However, I contend that it is the religious-minority status that leads people to value tolerance, particularly in religiously divided societies, as minority groups are the main subject of intolerance. This and other nuanced explanations will be tested in this study by a systematic micro-level comparative approach to how religion impacts tolerance and trust and how this differs across countries and years. I apply a database containing 51 uniquely synchronized Arab Barometer and World Value Surveys datasets of 15 MENA counties from between 2001 and 2014, enriched with macro-level indicators.