Islamophobia? Religion, Contact with Muslims, and the Respect for Islam

Abstract

In the midst of growing reservations about Muslims in America, this study seeks to explore the factors accounting for Islamophobia by utilizing nationally representative data. The findings suggest that religious affiliations have differential effects on the degree to which one respects Islam, with Christians more likely to have low regard for Islam. The image of a God who punishes his followers for their sins has a positive association with the odds of Islam being least respected among all religions. While higher frequency of contact with Muslims predicts an overall improved opinion for Islam, evangelical and black Protestants present the opposite picture. Their increased exposure to Muslims leads to lower respect for Islam. I discuss the implications of these findings for theories of intergroup contact and subcultural identity.

Does Islam play a role in anti-immigrant sentiment? An experimental approach

“…As mentioned, there is evidence of a positive link between religiosity and susceptibility to hold prejudice toward outgroups (Hunsberger and Jackson, 2005;Jackson and Hunsberger, 1999;Rowatt et al, 2005). Specifically, Christians are significantly more likely to hold Islam in low regard with Evangelicals, relative to unaffiliated, showing the strongest negative perception (Jung, 2012). Furthermore, higher overall enmity toward immigrants has been observed among Evangelical Christians, relative to mainline Protestants and Catholics (McDaniel et al, 2011).…”

“…Only Atheists are perceived more negatively (Pew, 2014). Evangelicals also show low levels of ''respect'' for Islam and, unlike Mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, more contact with Muslims hardens rather than ameliorates this negative perception (Jung, 2012). Other work on anti-immigration sentiment, independent of the religious affiliation of the immigrants, finds that Evangelicals harbor significantly more negative attitudes relative to ''secular'' and unaffiliated Christians (Brint and Abrutyn, 2010).…”

“…Explicit opposition to citizenship for legal Muslim immigrants is greater than explicit opposition to citizenship for legal Christian immigrants. 9 A notable exception is the work by Jung (2012) H1b. Implicit opposition to citizenship for legal Muslim immigrants is greater than implicit opposition to citizenship for legal Christian immigrants.…”

“…17 Previous work has considered explicit attitudes among Christians in general and Evangelicals in particular, comparing them to unaffiliated Christian and/or secular respondents. Results show that, overall, Evangelicals harbor more negative attitudes toward Islam (Jung, 2012;Pew, 2014), which does not diminish with contact (Jung, 2012). As our design could only test the perception of Muslim and Christian immigrants, we limited the analysis to Christian respondents to clearly delineate the ingroup and outgroup in the experiment.…”

Assessing outgroup prejudice among 13–15-year-old students attending Catholic and Protestant secondary schools in Northern Ireland: An empirical enquiry

“…In a second paper drawing on the second database, Village (2011) focused on the responses given by 2,756 white adolescents and employed path analysis to disentangle the complex web of relationships connecting personality, religiosity and outgroup prejudice. The assessment of attitudes toward religious diversity building on the concept of 'social distance' offers an approach that ismay be less confrontational than the approach advanced, for example, by Lee, Gibbons, Thompson, &and Timani (2009) in their development of 'The Islamophobia Scale', or as discussed by Jung (2012) in the discussion of 'Islamophobia'.…”