The rejection and acceptance of Muslim minority practices: A person-centered approach

Abstract

In Western societies, generalized prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiments can be major drivers of the rejection of Muslim religious practices. However, people can also reject such practices for other reasons, such as concerns about civil liberties or the secular nature of the state. With national samples of German and Dutch majority members ( N = 3,703), we used a multiple-acts-multiple-actors design to simultaneously examine attitudes toward four religious practices of three religious groups. Latent profile analysis revealed a subgroup of people that used a double standard and more strongly rejected Muslims than Christians and Jews engaging in the same practices (discriminatory rejection, 16.3%). However, four other subgroups responded to the practices independently of religious group (equal acceptance, 18.3%; equally moderate, 35%; equal rejection, 17.3%; and partial equal rejection, 13.1%). The five subgroups differ on key psychological correlates and self-reported reasons for rejection. We conclude that a multiple-acts-multiple-actors design provides a more nuanced understanding of how majority members evaluate Muslim minority practices in Western nations.

Rejecting Muslim minority practices

“…A vast majority of them was also negative towards the practice of wearing veils in public on the list experiment. Critical exclusive individuals were also less likely to think that others should be respected unconditionally and more likely to be closeminded, which is in line with other findings (Dangubić et al, 2022;Lalljee et al, 2009;Zitzmann, 2022).…”

“…The fact that they did not use an opportunity to express negativity towards immigrants indirectly but were only negative towards the gendered practice of wearing a veil, strongly indicates that there is a substantial subgroup of individuals that is genuinely critical of perceived gender inequality and not prejudiced or exclusionary towards Muslims. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that this subgroup of individuals endorsed unconditional respect for others and civil liberties, and also had an open-minded thinking style, all of which have an important role in accepting minority outgroups and their practices (Korol, 2017;Dangubić et al, 2022;Lalljee et al, 2009;Van der Noll, 2014). This 'critical inclusive' subgroup was the largest one (one in three participants) but is typically ignored in prejudice research.…”

“…Research shows that open-minded individuals are more likely to have unprejudiced attitudes towards different groups (Korol, 2017;Nesdale et al, 2011) and to accept dissenting practices and beliefs (Butrus & Witenberg, 2015). For example, a study in the Netherlands found a positive association between openmindedness and the acceptance of Muslim minorities (Dangubić et al, 2022).…”

“…or agree (=7) with the following four items based on Stanovich and West (1997) and used in previous research (Dangubić et al, 2022): "I usually try to understand beliefs and behaviors that I find wrong and reject", "I always try to consider whether there are good reasons for accepting cultural differences or not", "I usually try to find a balance between what I find unacceptable and the freedom of other people to live the way they want", and "I always try to understand why people sometimes do very different things from what I personally think is right and good". The items formed a reliable scale (α = .79) and an average score was used.…”

Lines in the Shifting Sand

“…Tolerance is considered a crucial ingredient for enabling the co-existence of diverse ways of life in pluralistic societies due to its potential to reduce intergroup conflict arising from deep-seated differences between groups; but stable intergroup harmony requires an acceptable arrangement for all groups in the dynamic (i.e., both the tolerators and the tolerated), such that no group feels unfairly subjugated. Although theorizing and research has approached tolerance from the perspective of tolerating agents, focusing on the predictors of tolerance toward minority groups (Adelman et al, 2021a;, the underlying processes of tolerance (Dangubić et al, 2022;Simon & Schaefer, 2016), or tolerance's boundary conditions (Forst, 2004;Velthuis et al, 2022), the possible implications for those being tolerated has received no systematic attention (but see Bagci et al, 2020). Given the emphasis on tolerance as a way of negotiating deep-seated differences, it is critical at this juncture to evaluate the costs and benefits of being tolerated for targets.…”