Islamic Constitutions and Religious Minorities

Abstract

Acknowledgements: Moamen Gouda acknowledges financial support from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies research fund. We are grateful for comments by Mahdi Khesali, which helped to improve the paper.

Securing personal freedom through institutions: the role of electoral democracy and judicial independence

“…One pattern is striking: When the share of Muslims in the population is controlled for (which itself is linked to significantly less personal freedom), when Muslim-majority countries are dropped from the sample or when countries in the MENA region are excluded, the democracy indicator seizes to show a statistically significant effect (in 14 of the 15 estimated models). This is consistent with empirical results showing that Muslim countries are less likely to implement the rule of law (Gutmann and Voigt 2015) and more likely to discriminate against religious minorities (Gouda and Gutmann 2020), and that even second-generation immigrants who stem from Muslim countries are less tolerant than other second-generation immigrants (Berggren et al 2019).…”

“…It is certainly not unheard of for majorities to curtail ways of living for various minorities or to make criticism of the government more difficult by intimidating independent media. Sometimes, majorities oppose personal freedom flat out-such as in the case of disallowing religious freedom or the freedom to form legal relationships with whomever one wants (Berggren et al 2017;Gouda and Gutmann 2020). Still, democracy comes in different forms, and it often goes hand in hand with what one might call "widening circles of inclusion", which manifests itself in further formal and informal institutions that uphold generality in the treatment of citizens (Buchanan and Congleton 1998).…”

“…For example, before democracy made its appearance, it was common for certain classes of citizens to rule, with, in many cases, limited interest in the personal freedom of the population at large. Likewise, in present dictatorial systems, there is generally little regard for freedom of any kind, both exemplified by communist and Islamist rulers who force their own view of the good life vehemently on others (Gouda and Gutmann 2020). Yet another factor to consider is the general development of a postmaterialist orientation, which may entail both "liberty aspirations" and democratization (Welzel and Inglehart 2005).…”

Roots of tolerance among second-generation immigrants

“…For details, see Table A13 in online appendix 2.We include five other measures of the influence of Islam in society: membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (dummy), whether Islam is constitutionally entrenched (dummy), the Islamic State Index, the degree to which the constitution denotes the supremacy of Islam (SI-clause) and whether the constitution identifies Islam as a source of legislation (ISL-clause). The three first measures are from Gutmann and Voigt (2015) and the latter two from Gouda and Gutmann (2018). 21 These measures are all negatively related to tolerance when included on their own, but lose or continue not to display significance when the share of Muslims is included in the model, while the latter predictor always retains its strong significance.…”

“… 21 Gouda and Gutmann (2018) find that discrimination against religious minorities is higher in Muslim countries, but only if they implement Sharia law.…”