Do Muslims Believe in Political Participation?

The ethnoreligious diversity has become a prominent feature of many contemporary democracies in Western Europe. Earlier studies sought to incorporate this ethnoreligious identity in models of people’s political behaviour stating that ethnoreligious minorities tend to vote less at elections. Due to the compulsory voting in Belgium, voter turn out has not been subject of investigation. But when studying vote intention of Belgian Muslims, our data confirm the earlier findings of a lower voter turnout of Muslims. However several scholars point to a broader definition of political participation where non-electoral forms of influencing politics has been highlighted. In our study we focus hereon by examining the intensity of non-electoral participation among Muslims as a disadvantaged group in a representative democracy, and further explain the political engagement of Belgian Muslims. Nielsen (2013) and Stockemer (2014) argue that non-electoral participation is gaining popularity, especially in countries where the political efficacy is low. Citizens use those methods as a way of protesting and try to influence policy on their terms (Stockemer, 2014). We will use data of the Belgian Local Elections Survey (2018) and the Belgian National Elections Survey (2019) to investigate to what extent Muslim minorities are satisfied with the democratic system, and how this relates to their non-electoral participation.