Perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam among European Muslims before and after ISIS: the important roles of residential segregation and education

Abstract

Perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam is one of the indicating features of Islamic fundamentalism and, in some cases, is serving as a pull to join extremist groups. In this paper, using data from two waves of a cross‐national survey, we investigate what affects European Muslims’ opinions about Western governments. We find that residential segregation is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam. Further, we find that Muslims living in segregated neighbourhoods and enclaves have a higher probability of believing that Western governments are hostile to Islam. National origins of Muslim immigrants have a significant impact, with people from African countries measuring less perceived hostility than others. We also find that education is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam in a non‐linear way. People with the highest and lowest levels of education tend to be less likely to believe that Western governments are hostile to Islam, relative to people with mid‐level education. This non‐linear effect is best explained by education’s differential effects on perceptions of key world events. During the time between 2011 – before ISIS’s announcement of its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria – and 2013, subsequent to that announcement, we see a sharp decrease in perception of Western governments’ hostility to Islam, particularly among more educated European Muslims. We make the case that this decrease can be attributed, in some ways, to the emergence of ISIS. We discuss our findings in terms of theoretical and policy implications.

Terrorist attacks and minority perceived discrimination

“…This finding is consistent with the interpretation of Hekmatpour and Burns (2019) that the decrease in the perception of Western governments' hostility to Islam among highly educated Muslims after the declaration by Isis of its caliphate is related to their willingness to distance themselves from its extreme ideology. Since the emergence of ISIS, there has been a growing pressure on Muslims to publicly denounce “Islamic terrorism.” Muslims with a high socioeconomic status may have responded more to this pressure in an attempt to redefine/blur the boundaries of between with the in‐group (Zolberg & Woon, 1999), thereby mediating the effect of terrorist attacks on their perceptions of discrimination.…”

“…This finding is consistent with the interpretation of Hekmatpour and Burns (2019) that the decrease in the perception of Western governments' hostility to Islam among highly educated Muslims after the declaration by Isis of its caliphate is related to their willingness to distance themselves from its extreme ideology. Since the emergence of ISIS, there has been a growing pressure on Muslims to publicly denounce "Islamic terrorism."…”

“…Terrorist attacks arguably qualify as major events that may reshuffle the status‐quo racial hierarchy , lowering the relative standing of Muslims vis‐à‐vis other minorities. By emphasizing Muslims as the major “suspect community” (Hekmatpour & Burns, 2019), terrorist attacks may not only lead Muslims to perceive higher discrimination, they can also reduce the salience of other long‐standing discriminatory grounds, such as, for example, the Continental background, that typically articulate the otherness of non‐Muslim ethnoracial minorities. In this context, jihadist attacks may reduce the short‐term perception of discrimination among non‐Muslims.…”

“…Additionally, Jacobs et al (2011) show that complaints about anti-Semitism in Belgium increased during the Israeli military operation Cast Lead in Gaza. In the context of terrorism, Hekmatpour and Burns (2019) show that European Muslims' opinions about Western governments are strongly affected by residential segregation.…”

The socialpsychology of Islamist terror – interdisciplinary perspectives on violence and ISIS totalitarian structures

“…At the same, it must be pointed out that the Western, particularly the public realm of politics and media coverage, behaves in a similar way in so far as they draw on simplified representations of Islamist perpetrators by depicting them as actors who had been criminals for their entire life and who are partly illiterate and particularly pathological (Hekmatpour & Burns, 2019;Vidino et al, 2017;West & Lioyd, 2017). This is disastrous in many ways.…”