Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance: The Muslim Pilgrims’ Paradox

Abstract

In the book, Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance: The Muslim Pilgrims, Alexseev & Zhemukhov (2017) highlighted the association between religiosity and tolerance by conducting an empirical study focusing on whether engagement with the highly religious ritual -Hajj (pilgrimage) in Islam promotes inter-group tolerance. By implementing Durkheimian perspective into the tolerance literature, the authors have written a high caliber book by examining both pilgrimaged and non-pilgrimaged Muslims from Russia's North Caucasus region's tolerance of out-group members. The authors found that pilgrimaged Muslims returned home with more tolerant views towards out-groups. In addition, the authors used their findings to explain variations of Muslim integration to the United States and European countries and to provide a new perspective of Latino/a integration to the US. This book is a collaboration by two scholars with different backgrounds; Mikhail A. Alexseev (a political scientist) and Sufian N. Zhemukhov (a historian). The study is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.This study has been conducted in various places, in Hajj (Saudi Arabia), in Russia's North Caucasus and the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, where Islam, nationalism, and dissatisfaction with Russian power mingle. The majority of the Muslim population in Russia's North Caucasus region have implemented Islam into their everyday lives, and Islam has become a salient identity for most members of the Muslim population, particularly after the long suppression and control of the Soviet Union.The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Alexseev and Zhemukhov focus on the history of the Muslim population in Russia's North Caucasus region and then highlight the importance of the Hajj for the Muslim population by looking at the Hajj process through ethno-national, historical, and religious interconnections. Alexseev and Zhemukhov explain the organizational steps of the study and their exploratory interviews with local young participants in Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygea. In this section the authors highlight the importance of the exploratory interviews and their impact on the organization of their study. In the second part of the book, the authors explain the hajj model of social tolerance by developing their theoretical framework to clarify what they mean by the term Pilgrims' Paradox. In the third part of the book, the authors attempt to implement the Hajj model of tolerance to explain the integration of Muslims in the United States and European countries. The authors also examine whether repositioning, re-categorization, and re-personalization processes apply in other settings, such as integration of Latino population to the United States.In the first chapter of the book, Alexseev and Zhemukhov explain the importance of Hajj from both a religious perspective and a socio-historical background of the region. The Hajj, in both Russia's North Caucasus and in the Kabardino-Balkaria, has been u...