The relationship between Islamic religiosity and political participation: What role do homeland ties and discrimination play?

This study asks how Islamic religiosity relates to the political participation of Muslims in the Netherlands and whether some of the ambiguous findings in previous studies might be explained by the roles of discrimination and homeland. Although religiosity is often considered to be promotive of political participation and perhaps even more so for minorities, Islamic religiosity is often blamed for the poor political integration of European Muslims. Little is known however about how exactly Islamic religiosity relates to the political participation of this group and the few existing studies have sometimes found contradictory and surprising results. The current study goes beyond previous studies firstly by not treating Islamic religiosity as merely a social capital indicator but rather distinguishing individual, communal and literalist dimensions, and theorizing how these may relate differentially to political participation. Secondly by illuminating two mechanisms that may help us understand these relationships better: homeland ties and discrimination. Where Islamic religiosity is thought to strengthen homeland ties, we test whether these ties are indeed detrimental to political participation as classic integration theories would suggest or rather promotive as some transnational theorists would suggest. Discrimination is included as an experience which can sometimes mobilize and sometimes demobilize participation. Using a two study approach and applying structural equation modelling, initial findings reveal that strong Muslim identifiers tend to experience more discrimination. These experiences can hinder voting intention yet be promotive of non-electoral participation. Furthermore we found that religiosity relates strongly to homeland ties. Yet, in contrast to the idea that these ties present a barrier to political participation we find some evidence that they can be promotive to participation.