Faith in Self-Rule: How Do Young Muslims with Migrations Background Perceive Democracy?

European democracies are changing. In the last decades, the share of the Muslim population has been on the rise in (West) European democracies such as Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands or the UK. Parties that can be attributed to right-wing populism or the far right have made important electoral gains, often campaigning for a curbing of migration from Islamicate countries that are portrayed as a danger to the liberty of Europe that actors on the right claim to defend. But do Muslims in Europe who migrated from non-European autocratic countries support liberal democracy less than the general population? Recent research has shown that migrants from authoritarian countries do generally support the values of liberal democracy about as strongly as the average European population (Gülzlau/Helbling/Morgenstern 2025) which also holds true for Muslims with migration background in Germany, although the experience of personal discrimination can lower support for democracy and secularism (Grewal/Hamid 2022). However, the question of how Muslims understand the concept of democracy and its elements like popular sovereignty operationalized through general and free elections and the guarantee of basic liberties often remains outside the focus of research. This study, based on qualitative interviews and the employment of the method of photo elicitation, aims to explore the understanding of democracy by young Muslims in Germany and its sub-concepts like elections and guarantees of basic liberties. In addition, it aims to answer the following questions: How do young Muslims see the role of their in-group in the diverse society of today’s Germany? And what are their views on the exercise of basic rights by members of social groups such as Christians, Jews, atheists and members of the LGBTIQA+ community, i.e. members of groups whose convictions or lifestyle might be seen as being in conflict with orthodox Islamic teachings? The results show that young Muslims’ views on democracy and its sub-concepts do not seem to differ much from views held in the general population of Germany and that young Muslims do hardly tie their views on democracy to their religious beliefs. The idea of the rule of the people, operationalized by holding free, fair and regular elections is supported as well as the idea of the guarantee of basic freedoms. However, enmity towards Jews and members of the LGBTIQA+ community is articulated by some Muslim participants. However, these sentiments do not seem to be grounded in religious convictions. While interviewees express the view that liberal democracy is a value in itself, the idea that it serves as a framework enabling individual economic prosperity is also held, thereby tying democracy to an output legitimization. While some Muslims interviewees see the call for further restrictions on immigration as motivated by racist sentiment, others share the notion of immigration as a threat to social stability despite their own immigrant status.