The vicious circle of religious prejudice: Islamophobia makes the acculturation attitudes of majority and minority members clash

Abstract

Public discourse often portrays Islam as the main obstacle for Muslim minorities' integration, paying little attention to the contextual factors hindering this process. Here, we focus on islamophobia as one destructive factor that hinders the mutual integration between Muslim minority and Western majority members, affecting both groups. In Study 1, the more islamophobic majority members were, the more they expected Muslims to give up their heritage culture and the less they wanted them to integrate. In Study 2, only when Muslims experienced substantial religious discrimination did religious identity negatively relate to national engagement and particularly positively relate to ethnic engagement. Together, the studies suggest that religious prejudice in the form of islamophobia is a major obstacle to Muslims' integration because it increases the incongruity between majority and minority members' acculturation attitudes.

The Global Refugee Crisis: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications for Improving Public Attitudes and Facilitating Refugee Resettlement

“…Indeed, migrants who perceive dislike, hostility, and/or prejudice are less likely to initiate contact with, and identify with, members of the dominant host society (Berry, Kim, Power, Young, & Bujaki, ; Rumbaut, ). Kunst, Sadeghi, Tahir, Sam, and Thomsen (), for example, found that when Muslims in America faced religious discrimination, such as being called terrorists, religious identity was negatively associated with national engagement and positively associated with ethnic engagement. Put simply, among Muslims who had experienced severe discrimination, the more strongly they identified with being Muslim (e.g., “My Muslim identity is an important part of myself”), the more strongly they endorsed attitudes of segregation (e.g., wanting to spend less time with other Americans and more time with other Muslims).…”

With a little help from our friends: The impact of cross‐group friendship on acculturation preferences

“…Evidence suggests that host nationals often demand that immigrant groups adopt the mainstream culture of the host society, while not supporting the immigrants’ maintenance of their culture of origin (Kunst, Sadeghi, Tahir, Sam, & Thomsen, ; Van Acker & Vanbeselaere, ; Zagefka, Brown, Broquard, & Martin, ; Zagefka et al., ), and this is especially true for immigrants from devalued communities (Montreuil & Bourhis, ).…”

Psychological Study of Perceived Religious Discrimination and Its Consequences for a Muslim Population

“…That makes this a useful study with potential policy and practice implications. The study by Kunst et al (2016) demonstrates that the greater the fear of Islam, the greater the demand that minorities assimilate-the greater the perceived Islamophobia, the greater the separation of minorities and the greater the fear of them. It is the vicious circle of Islamophobia.…”

“…Indeed, a large body of research has shown that being the target of discrimination can cause psychological and physical suffering (Bourguignon et al 2012;Clark et al 1999;Every and Perry 2014;Lagacé and Tougas 2006;Major and O'Brien 2005;Noh and Kaspar 2003). These negative effects concern all perceived discrimination, be they ethnic (Krieger and Sidney 1996), related to disability (Snyder et al 2010), gender (Schmitt et al 2003), age (Redman and Snape 2006) or religious orientation (Kunst et al 2016). However, while perceived discrimination negatively affects the physical and psychological well-being of stigmatized individuals, a review of the literature reveals that these individuals use adjustment strategies to counteract these deleterious effects and enable them to adapt socially (Bourguignon and Herman 2007;Branscombe et al 1999;Crocker and Major 1989).…”