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Abstract

Does government-based religious discrimination against religious minorities and government support of majority religion affect religiously motivated societal violence between minorities and majority religious groups in Western democracies? Analyzing Muslim minorities, this study tries to answer the question by looking specifically at the religious violence perpetrated by and against these minorities in the West. Using a novel cross-national time-series data on 25 Western countries disaggregated by victim and perpetrator groups, this paper finds that while discrimination contributes to a country encountering religiously driven societal violence perpetrated by both Muslim and majority religious groups, government support for majority religion seems to pose no security threat. Furthermore, a case study analysis of the UK employing the synthetic control method corroborates the results of the cross-country analysis. The findings have important policy implications for counter-strategies against both Islamic and right-wing violent extremism in the West.

Keywords

discrimination violence muslim minorities west religious regulation

Introduction

The flow of Muslim immigrants to the West in the last decade and the accommodation of their religious practices have increased host members’ security and cultural threat perceptions, which particularly intensified after violent attacks by Islamist extremist groups in the early 2000s. This drives native citizens to commit violent acts against immigrants. The ongoing threat posed by Islamist extremism and the rise of right-wing violence required Western governments to design new religious and security policies to deal with this complicated situation (Fox et al., 2018).

Accordingly, they developed a new policy agenda that includes restrictions on religious activities and institutions of Muslim minorities to securitize Islam and reduce public pressure. In their study, Fox et al. (2018) show that due to the aim for the securitization of Islam, Muslim minorities in the West experience a disproportionate level of government-based religious discrimination (GRD) compared to other religious minorities. Do these discriminatory religious policies have an intended impact on violence between the Muslim minority and majority religious groups in Western countries?

Despite the importance of answering this question for reducing religious violence and ensuring the peaceful coexistence of two religious groups in the West in this century of religious resurgence, only a few studies explored minority-specific objective discrimination and religiously motivated violence in the West (Fox, 2020; Fox et al., 2018, 2021). However, they either focus on explaining social-religious discrimination without considering GRD as a predictor or treat GRD as a dependent variable while investigating its determinants in the West and other Christian-majority countries.

Conversely, other global cross-national studies explaining the relationship between GRD and various types of political violence do not distinguish between religious minorities or use data for violence disaggregated by both victim and perpetrator groups (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011; Basedau et al., 2016; Basedau & Schaefer-Kehnert, 2019; Henne, 2019; Saiya, 2019). Nevertheless, analysis using aggregate data on violence, religious minorities, and GRD may limit our understanding of religious groups’ motives to use violence against individuals or groups of another faith. On the other hand, to the best of our knowledge, except for Fox (2020), no cross-country studies examine how government support of majority religion (GSR) affects religiously motivated societal violence (RMSV) in the West. Fox (2020) focuses on only majority violence against religious minorities but does not analyze the impact of GSR on violence perpetrated by Muslims against Christian religious groups.

This paper aims to fill these gaps by investigating how GRD against Muslim minorities and support for the majority religion affect RMSV between Muslim and majority religious groups in Western democracies. From grievance theory (Gurr, 2000), GRD against Muslim minorities is expected to positively impact RMSV committed by Muslims against members of majority Christian groups since it would generate grievances among minorities as a result of their perceived injustice. GRD might also create an environment where Muslim minorities become victims of violent actions perpetrated by individuals or groups of the majority religion.

Exclusive targeting of Muslim minorities by governments potentially labels these minorities as “suspected communities,” which might give majority groups “permission to hate” from these communities (Poynting & Mason, 2006). In addition, members of the majority religion might consider discriminatory policies as another proof of the extraordinary security and cultural threat posed by Muslim communities. This perception could drive them to enforce religious discrimination against these minorities violently because of their conviction that government effort is not enough to deal with this serious threat (Demerath & Straight, 1997).

Following Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016’s theory, this paper also argues that GSR positively affects RMSV by the majority religious groups against Muslims. Given that policies supporting majority religion contribute to some Christian traditions and symbols becoming an essential part of Western people’s social identity, these policies may lead Christians to perceive Muslim minorities and accommodation of their religious rights as threats to their cultural values, potentially motivating them to use violence.

These arguments are tested using Religion and State-Minorities Round 3 data (Fox, 2020) on 25 Western countries from 1990 to 2014. The results based on the within-between random effect (REWB) model confirm most of the theoretical predictions and demonstrate that within Western countries, while an increase in GSR does not have a significant impact on RMSV between Muslim and majority Christian communities, GRD against Muslim minorities positively affects the level of RMSV against individuals or groups of another faith. The effect of GRD on violence by Muslim minorities against members of the majority religion derives mainly from restrictions on their religious institutions and dietary laws (halal food). On the other hand, Christian groups use a higher level of violence against Muslim minorities when the government follows discriminatory religious policies for issues that are widely discussed in public (such as restrictions on circumcisions, access to clergy, and observance of religious holidays) and the security threat of Islamic extremism (e.g., surveillance of Muslim groups). Applying the augmented synthetic control method, we leverage a CONTEST program in the UK as a case, and the results align with those of cross-country analysis.

These findings support global cross-national studies on religious discrimination that argue that GRD against religious minorities increases the risk of violence (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011; Basedau et al., 2011; Saiya, 2019; Saiya & Scime, 2015). We extend these studies by analyzing the impact of GRD on violence by and against discriminated religious minorities and showing that the grievances theory is not sufficient to explain the link between GRD and RMSV within the country. By comparatively analyzing the two groups for the impacts of GRD and GSR on RMSV, this study contributes to the literature on radicalization and inter-group hostility in the West (Obaidi et al., 2018; Vergani et al., 2020). Finally, this paper also contributes to debates on the consequences of violations of government neutrality towards all religious groups (Perez et al., 2017) by suggesting that GSR does not drive both religious groups to use violence as long as it does not lead to GRD.

Some Definitions

Following Fox (2020), GRD was defined as government restrictions placed on religious practices and institutions of religious minorities that are not also placed on majority religious groups. This definition excludes positive discrimination that particularly Muslim minorities benefit from and other types of discrimination against Muslim minorities, such as political, economic, and cultural discrimination. On the other hand, GSR refers to laws and policies that support various facets of the majority religion, such as funding religious institutions, giving religious education in schools, and legislating religious precepts.

In order to define RMSV, two aspects of the concept were considered, and their definitions were integrated: Societal violence and religious violence. Following Fox and Hoelscher (2012),¹ societal violence was defined for this study as ‘acts of violence committed by individuals or groups that do not actively reflect an attempt to contest the authority of a state’ (p. 433) and religious violence as violent actions in which religion is either subject or object of such behavior (Wellman & Tokuno, 2004). Benefiting from WHO’s broad definition, this article also defines violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, forced migration, and severe deprivation (Organization, 2002).

Accordingly, this paper considers acts of vandalism and harassment as a form of violence because these behaviors are closely linked to the potential escalation into violence and could be perceived as a threat of violence. In addition, these actions are frequently observed among Muslim and majority religious groups in the West, and several studies on violent extremism take these actions into account (e.g., Koehler (2016))². The broad definition of societal violence gives us a more comprehensive picture of inter-group tensions that might threaten physical integrity, even in countries where state violence or repression is not a significant issue (Cornett et al., 2016), like Western democracies.

Discrimination, Grievances, and Religiously Motivated Violence

Studies from the political violence literature have extensively used a grievance-based approach to connect discrimination or inequality to conflict behavior (Cederman et al., 2013; Gurr, 2000; Stewart, 2000). According to this approach, the perception of objective discrimination or inequality between groups generates frustration, anger, and grievances, which in turn fuel conflict-driven behavior (Gurr, 2000). However, in addition to the sense of injustice, additional factors need to exist to link objective discrimination or inequality to violence, such as in-group identification, politicization of group, framing of responsible actors for discrimination (Cederman et al., 2013), and elite-driven mobilization (Fox et al., 2019).

Still, other scholars argue that to connect group-based grievances to violence, contextual factors are likely to have an influence, such as political conditions (regime type and electoral system), economic conditions (natural resources), and demographic factors (population growth) (see Østby (2013) for a review). Indeed, numerous studies have indicated the link between minority discrimination and different types of political violence (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011; Moore, 1998; Piazza, 2011, 2012; Regan & Norton, 2005).

Many researchers apply grievance theory also to suppressed religious minorities. GRD against religious minority groups can engender grievances that could lead to various forms of conflict behavior (Basedau et al., 2023). Some studies investigate the link between GRD and terrorism (Henne, 2019; Piazza, 2012; Saiya, 2019; Saiya & Scime, 2015) and find either no correlation or a positive correlation. Other studies reveal that GRD is also associated with large-scale conflicts such as rebellion and armed conflict (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011), religious armed conflict (Basedau et al., 2011, 2016), and theological armed conflict (Basedau & Schaefer-Kehnert, 2019).

Role of Religious Identity in the GRD-Violence Link

In addition to the grievance-based approach, conflict research also emphasizes some characteristics of religious identity, which would explain the causal chain from GRD to grievances and then to religiously motivated violence (RMV).

First and foremost, religion shapes adherents’ understanding of life and gives answers to questions about the meaning of their existence (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011). Therefore, religion is a deeply rooted feature of the human soul, and believers probably perceive religious restrictions as denying their very existence (Saiya, 2019). Second, since religious issues and identities are considered indivisible, it is difficult to find a solution for these issues through bargaining, making violent conflict more likely (Toft, 2006). Examples of indivisibility involve secular or religious characteristics of a state, the general place of religion in society, characteristics of the legal system, and having authority over sacred territory or holy sites. Third, religious identity is exclusive, meaning that individuals can belong to only one religion. This generates in-group/out-group dynamics among different religious groups, which might ease the violence between these groups (Reynal-Querol, 2002).

Fourth, places of worship where people gather enable believers to remain in communication and frequently share each other’s experiences and feelings, which would increase the awareness of group-based discrimination among attendees. These places, as well as other religious organisation resources such as sermons, cleric hiring, and religious publications, can be exploited by religious leaders or other entrepreneurs to recruit and mobilise members for protest or violent actions (Gill & Gill, 2008). Fifth, extremist religious leaders can select some verses in the sacred texts and interpret them to legitimize the violence, which would be efficient in persuading the rank-and-file members to commit violent acts (Pearce, 2005). It is unsurprising that, in order to intensify their influence, the leaders heavily rely on their members’ knowledge and bitter experiences with religious discrimination. Therefore, GRD against minority groups weakens moderates and creates an uneven religious playing field for extremists by giving them proof for their narratives (Saiya & Scime, 2015). Finally, with regard to believers, major religions’ strong emphasis on an eternal afterlife that provides reward and punishment might decrease the cost of committing violence (Toft, 2006).

However, although the grievance theory as well as the characteristics of religion, implies the RMV committed by discriminated minorities, only a few studies in the literature analyze the association between objective discrimination against specific religious minorities and the RMV committed by these specific religious minorities (e.g., Saiya, 2019). In addition, existing literature focuses only on the effect of discriminatory policies on various forms of political violence. It neglects their effect on societal violence between religious groups, which does not require high resources or collective action. For this reason, an analysis of GRD on RMSV among interreligious groups disaggregated by perpetrator and victim would reveal a more nuanced effect of these discriminatory policies.

Furthermore, other than studies conducted by Fox (2020) and in collaboration with his colleagues (2018), to the best of our knowledge, no study focused on the objective religious discrimination against specific minorities in the West. Nevertheless, these studies aim to explain the determinants of GRD against minorities rather than the violence used by minorities experiencing GRD. From the social psychology literature, although a number of papers explore how perceived discrimination among Muslims affects their support for violence in Western countries, including the US (Beller & Kröger, 2021; Victoroff et al., 2012; Zhirkov et al., 2014), they do not analyze the impact of objective religious discrimination on violent actions perpetrated by these minorities. Hence, this article aims to address this gap by applying the existing theory to the Western context using disaggregated measures for both GRD and RMSV.

Discrimination and Muslim Minority Violence in the West

It is argued that given the disproportionate GRD against Muslim minorities as well as the impact of the historical conflict between Islam and Christianity on Muslim-Christian relations in the 21st century, the characteristics of religious identity and grievance theory mentioned above can make an important contribution to the explanation for Muslim minority-related societal violence in Western democracies. As Western countries perceive Muslim groups as a serious threat to their security, they impose more religious restrictions on Muslims than on other religious minorities (Fox & Akbaba, 2015; Fox et al., 2018)³. As Fox and Akbaba (2015) state, ‘securitized issues are lifted above normal ordinary politics and moved from normal to emergency politics. They are assigned an urgency that requires extraordinary measures to eliminate the threat’ (p. 176).

The process of securitizing Islam in the West escalated after the 9/11 terror attacks. Muslim minorities became ‘hyper-securitised’ in the wake of events including train bombings in Madrid and London and the killing of a Dutch filmmaker. This led policy-makers to intensify the restrictive policies that do not have a direct connection with security policies, such as restrictions on mosques, wearing headscarves, and dietary laws. These policies are exemplified by the 2009 Swiss ban on the construction of minarets in mosques and the increase in the number of Western countries (from 5 to 20) that restricted wearing religious clothing between 2007 and 2017 (Majumdar et al., 2019).

When some religious groups face more discrimination compared to other religious groups in a country, it can be expected that they would feel aggrieved as a result of perceived injustice. For instance, in 2019, when Austria’s parliament approved the ban on wearing headscarves in primary schools but allowed Sikh turbans and Jewish kippahs, tensions among religious groups heightened. Muslim women felt targeted and discriminated against explicitly and took to the streets to protest this law. Therefore, these restrictive religious policies may have the opposite effect of a security policy, as they might incite the religious minority to use violence to redress their grievances (Cesari, 2013; Saiya & Manchanda, 2020).

It would also be argued that minorities might address grievances through political protests. However, contrary to expectations, research indicates a negative correlation between GRD and the level of protest activity (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011; Arikan & Bloom, 2019). This would be due to the conviction that they need to take extreme measures to address the deep grievance and that governments can extend religious restrictions to prevent another protest or respond disproportionately (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011). Given the high level of perceived discrimination among Muslims in the West and the level of religious restrictions that sometimes threaten civil rights (Cesari, 2013; Fox, 2020), the same pattern would be observed in Western democracies.

Who to Blame

Following Grim and Finke (2010), it is also contended that repressed religious groups would see members of the majority religion as another responsible party (other than the government) for these discriminatory religious policies because members of the majority faith tradition generally support government restrictions on religious minorities due to their economic interests, perceived cultural threat, and political structure. For instance, a recent survey indicates that half of the European respondents support at least some restrictions placed on Muslim women’s religious dress, while 23% favor restrictions on all religious clothing (Salazar & Gardner, 2018). Furthermore, support of the religious majority groups would be a government strategy to decrease monitoring costs and facilitate regulatory acts, making enforcement of the GRD more efficient with the help of these groups (Grim & Finke, 2010). Hence, existing relevant literature as well as the context of Western Europe led to the first hypothesis tested in this paper:

Hypothesis 1:

As GRD against Muslim minorities in Western democracies increases, so do violent actions used by Muslim minorities against members of the majority religion.

Discrimination Against Muslim Minorities and Violence Used by Majority Groups

On the other hand, GRD would also encourage radicals within majority religious groups to inflict violence against religious minorities, thinking that state restrictions are insufficient or non-existent (Demerath & Straight, 1997). In addition, exclusive targeting of Muslim minorities by states with the aim of security and following restrictive policies at the cost of violation of civil rights would signal the extraordinary security risks posed by these groups, which would further increase the fear of Islamic terror among Western societies. For example, an analysis of data from five Western democracies reveals that over 40% of respondents hold the perception that Muslims are violent and supportive of terrorist groups (Ciftci, 2012). This fear and anger would foster an environment where radical factions may feel compelled to use violence against minorities in defense of their country or continent (Bjørgo & Gjelsvik, 2017). Moreover, if some of these restrictive religious policies are unrelated to issues directly threatening security —such as dietary laws, the wearing of religious symbols, and access to places of worship— this would lead host societies to perceive specific religious beliefs as drivers of violent extremism.

According to a survey conducted in 2014, 35 % of British people consider the Islamic faith as a threat (Pickel, 2013). This could potentially label the religion of Islam as a form of non-violent extremism (Qurashi, 2018), which might lead large Muslim groups - other than those involved in terrorism - to be regarded as “suspect communities” in the eyes of the public (Awan, 2012; Bonino, 2016). Stigmatization of Muslim communities in this way might intensify existing social cleavages between “us” - Western, liberal societies which are under attack – and “them” – suspect and dangerous Muslims, which in turn offers host societies “permission to hate” these communities or “moral license” to anti-Muslim violence (Poynting & Mason, 2006).

Additionally, restrictions placed on issues unrelated to societal security could be construed as an “official” signal by the public that the Islamic faith is incompatible with the Western way of life, likely heightening perceptions of a cultural threat. The perceived incompatibility of the Islamic faith and demographic changes due to recent immigration flows might lead the majority groups to believe that the “Islamization” of their country is becoming unavoidable or unmanageable (Diefenbach & von Scheve, 2023). Examining recent studies on the effect of perceived cultural threat (Kunst & Obaidi, 2020; Obaidi et al., 2018; Piazza, 2023), it is expected that a heightened level of cultural threat is likely to result in majority violence against Muslims.

Finally, a broad range of restrictions on religion, coupled with Muslims’ complaints or refusals to comply, may be seen by majority groups as intentional acts of disrespect or misrecognition against Western culture, the public (Diefenbach & von Scheve, 2023), and the state. This perception could potentially motivate members of the majority religion to resort to force in order to compel compliance from Muslims. The reported harassment and violence against Muslim women wearing veils in public in France after the 2009 ban might serve as an illustrative example (Saiya & Manchanda, 2020). Accordingly, the following hypothesis is formulated:

Hypothesis 2:

As GRD against Muslim minorities in Western democracies increases, so do violent actions used by the majority Christian groups against members of Muslim minorities.

It is important to emphasize that our arguments are probabilistic, not deterministic. So, we do not claim GRD is likely to be the primary or sole driver of RMSV in the West. We also acknowledge the complex relationship between GRD and RMSV. Several studies present arguments supporting the opposite direction of what we theorized above. For example, Grim and Finke (2010) state that violence used by majority religious groups against religious minorities would put pressure on governments to cope with existing perceived threats, which drives them to “restrict religious freedoms in an effort to maintain order, protect the citizenry, and reduce potential violence.” Their panel-data analyses based on 143 countries confirmed their theory. Yet, their research does not distinguish between different minority groups or between restrictions imposed on majority and minority religions (Fox, 2020).

On the other hand, Fox et al. (2018) contend that this association might not be apparent under ordinary circumstances but could emerge when a trigger or perceived existential threat exists, such as the “securitization of Islam” within the Western context. However, in this case, the security threat causes both societal religious discrimination (SRD) and GRD (Fox, 2020). For example, they showed that SRD predicts GRD for Muslim minorities but not Christians, Buddhists, and Jews in the West.⁴

We agree with Fox et al. (2018) regarding the impact of perceived threats on SRD. However, the theory outlined above contributes to the discussion by arguing that GRD itself plays a role in escalation of threat perception by fostering the creation of “suspected and distinct communities” offering permission to hate, which in turn triggers societal violence against religious minorities. Given that perceived existential threat is intensified by various factors in addition to the existing level of Muslim violence – which might lead to overestimation of Islamic terror (Snook, 2021) and immigration (Trends, 2014) – such as media framing of terrorism (Baele et al., 2019; Von Sikorski et al., 2020), the interest of politics in generating public fear (Best, 2018), an empirical examination of GRD as one of these factors would make an important contribution to the existing literature.

Finally, it is also crucial to mention that GRD would not always directly result in RMSV but under certain conditions. For example, a few scholars content that grievance as a result of GRD is required but not sufficient for the eruption of violence and demonstrate that favorable opportunities such as anocracy (Muchlinski, 2014), minority size, and state capacity (Basedau et al., 2017), and leaders’ mobilization efforts (Fox et al., 2019), play a significant role in the eruption of conflicts. In the Western context, these opportunity structures may be less applicable than in areas with large-scale conflicts, as we focus on small-scale RMSV that don’t necessitate significant mobilization efforts or resources. Nevertheless, we still consider some relevant ones in the empirical part below.

GSR and Religiously Motivated Violence

As detailed above, numerous studies in the literature connect forms of political violence mostly to GRD against religious minorities. On the other hand, only a couple of studies examine the effect of GSR on majority group violence (Henne et al., 2020; Saiya, 2017). However, these studies proposed theories to explain the association between GSR and terrorism in the Muslim world. Given the different political and social contexts between Muslim-majority and Western countries, different theories would better explain the theorized link in the West. Therefore, to account for the same relationship in a different area, although this paper benefits from some explanations proposed in these studies (e.g., religious economy), the main argumentation detailed below utilizes social identity theory. It focuses on how support for religion would increase the perceived threat of majority religious groups (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016), resulting in violent actions towards Muslim religious minorities.

According to social identity theory, when groups’ in-group identification is activated, they become inclined to protect their cultural values. Moreover, if groups feel that their symbolic resources are threatened, they develop a prejudice against out-groups (Tajfel, 1974). Several studies confirm that the perceived threat is a crucial factor that contributes to the explanation for intolerant attitudes of people towards out-groups, for example, immigrants with different religious or ethnic identities (Bloom et al., 2015). The important point for this study is the factors that provide a basis for cultural-threat perception. That is, in which environment are Western societies more likely to feel their cultural values threatened and to become intolerant towards Muslim groups, regardless of the minorities’ size or population?

Given the role of religion in shaping social identity, governments’ friendly relations with the majority religion create this environment (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016). By assuming that Muslims claim a share of religious support to live their faith with somehow equal opportunity, it is reasonable for the majority groups to have negative attitudes towards Muslim minorities as they face a substantial loss of what contributes to their social identity. This is especially the case for apparent government policies that support majority faith, such as religious holidays, religious education, and religious symbols on a flag (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016). Given the Muslims’ demand for equal treatment for all religious groups in a country (Haddad, 2002), GSR would increase dominant religious groups’ fear of losing their status quo in case Muslim minorities received the same support.

This fear can propel them to engage in discrimination, harassment, and violence against minority groups. In addition, GSR in the West may lead members of the majority religion to commit violence against Muslim minorities because it gives additional political power and resources to majority groups, which they can use to suppress their competitors and gain an advantage in the religious market (Finke, 2013). Moreover, where religion is politicized, and the government favors one particular faith, dominant religious groups often presume that their advantaged position enables them to persecute religious minorities (Saiya, 2021). From these arguments, the following hypothesis is derived:

Hypothesis 3:

As GSR increases, so do violent actions perpetrated by members of the majority religion against members of Muslim minorities.

Data and Method

This study mainly uses the Religion and State-Minorities Round 3 (RASM3) dataset provided by Fox (2020).⁵ This dataset covers the period from 1990 to 2014, and minorities that reach the population threshold of 0.25% in a country are included in the dataset. The RAS 3 societal module was used to measure violence by Muslim minorities as the first dependent variable of the analyses in this study. The module provides five variables to measure violent/semi-violent actions used by religious minorities against members of the majority religion, which scale from zero (no incidents) to 2 (the action occurs on a substantial level). These variables code the Muslims’ acts of violence, terror, vandalism, harassment, and other violent/semi-violent actions. All five variables were summed up, and the additive index was created, which goes from zero to 3 with a mean of 0.3. While, in theory, the composite violence measure for Muslim minorities could range from zero to 10, our dataset does not align with this because there is no country where Muslim minorities partake in all types of violent actions at a substantial level. In the specified time frame, instances of Muslim minority violence were observed in 153 country-years (out of 625) across 13 Western nations. Notably, within 11 of these countries (36 country-years), there was variation in the levels of such violence over the same period.

In order to measure the second dependent variable, violence by majority religious groups, variables in the module referring to severe harassment, vandalism, and violence were selected to create a multicomponent index⁶ to make it as comparable as possible with the index for Muslim minority violence. The actual index of violence perpetrated by the majority religious groups consists of 11 items and ranges from zero to 10, with a mean score of 2.1. Again, this index could potentially range from zero to 22, but there is no Western country in our dataset where majority groups are involved in all types of violent actions at a substantial level. All Western countries, except for Portugal, witnessed incidents of majority violence throughout the specified period. Moreover, within 23 of these states, the levels of such violence exhibited variation between 1990 and 2014.

Our chief independent variables measure GRD against Muslim minorities and GSR. To measure GRD against Muslims, the RASM 3 dataset was used, which provides 35 types of restrictions that are applied to religious practices and institutions of Muslim minorities but not to those of majority religious groups. The activity is coded as ‘0’ if it is not significantly restricted, ‘1’ if it is slightly restricted, and ‘2’ if it is substantially restricted. These restrictions include but are not limited to those placed on access to mosques or religious leaders, constructing and repairing mosques, wearing religious clothing, and writing and importing religious publications. Muslims experience 24 types of GRD in Western Europe, and 19 of these expose Muslims to a higher level of religious discrimination than other religious minorities. To operationalize the second chief independent variable, government support of religion, the same dataset was drawn on, which contains 51 binary items coding a wide range of types of laws and government practices that support aspects of religion, including the law regarding inheritance, dietary laws, giving a direct grant to religious institutions, and the presence of religious education in public schools.

Following Fox (2020), a composite measure for GRD against Muslims was created by combining all 35 items and for GSR by summing all 51 items without weighting. The final variables scale from zero to 18 for GRD against Muslims and 2 to 17 for GSR. Except for Canada, all 25 Western countries exhibit some form of GRD, which varies within 19 countries (49 country-years) over the dataset’s time span. Additionally, every Western government analyzed in this study supported religion, with the level of support varying within 18 countries (32 country years) during the same period. Figure 1 illustrates how the means of the main dependent and independent variables in this study varies between 1990 and 2014.⁷

Figure 1.

Means of the main dependent and independent variables over the years from 1990 to 2014.

Controls

In addition to the theoretically relevant variables accounting for RMSV in the West, the factors used in the literature to explain different forms of political violence were considered since these factors would also affect other types of non-political violence (Fox & Hoelscher, 2012; Rivera, 2016). For the first analysis testing the impact of GRD against Muslims on violent actions by Muslim minorities, control began with countries’ natural logs of the total population, land area, and per capita GDP, which are taken from the Bank (2019). Highly populated, territorially large, and poorer countries decrease the opportunity cost of using violent actions. While the first two limit governments’ ability to find and punish perpetrators, the latter makes persuading young people to join such activities easier as they have less to lose (Fearon & Laitin, 2003). The youth bulge was also controlled for as a proportion of the young people in the age range of 15–29 to the total population using World Population Prospects (2019). Economic inequality is included as it might increase perceived injustice among people facing inequality and possibly erode social cohesion, which might render political (Cederman et al., 2013) or societal violence (Harris & Vermaak, 2015) a viable option in these fragmented societies. Estimate of Gini index of inequality in equivalized household disposable income is used as a measure taken by the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) (Solt, 2020).

Considering the perceived cultural and economic threat theory, variables that explain the violence of majority Christian groups against Muslim minorities were included in the second analysis of this study. The perceived cultural threat of host societies as a driver of violence toward Muslims might increase when Muslim communities hold a higher percentage within a country. Similarly, an increase in the majority group’s percentage is expected to mitigate the perceived threat, thereby reducing the likelihood of violence against minorities. Furthermore, according to religious power politics, explained in detail by Fox et al. (2021), dominant religious groups tend to protect their monopoly with the support of governments. This compels them to engage in discriminatory acts toward minority religious groups that demographically challenge existing power relations. The measures for majority group percent and Muslim minority percent represent the size of majority or Muslim religious groups as a percentage of the total population. While the latter measure is taken only from the RASM 3 dataset, the former is constructed exploiting the Religious Characteristics of States Dataset (RCS) (Brown & James, 2018) in addition to RASM 3.⁸ A number of studies connect support for populism to political violence. For instance, Piazza (2023)’s recent study demonstrates that support for populism predicts support for political violence, and this effect is mediated by concern about social/demographic shifts as well as preference for illiberal rule. The measure of populist party support makes use of the populist vote share in parliamentary elections as documented in PopuList 2.0 (January 2020 version), which forms part of the Parliament and Government Composition Database (ParlGov) initiative (Döring & Manow, 2020).

On the other hand, bad economic situations, measured by low GDP per capita, make members of the host society more intolerant towards those they perceive as ‘job stealer immigrants’ due to the competition over scarce resources (Semyonov et al., 2006). Some studies found that governments with high bureaucratic quality are more successful in coping with economic, social, and security problems derived from immigration and refugee flows (Böhmelt et al., 2019). The measure of bureaucratic quality provided in the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) is added to the list of control variables accounting for majority group violence. Finally, religiosity is taken into account, as practicing religion and attaching importance to it potentially intensifies religious group identities, leading to in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice, which might contribute to out-group violence (Fox et al., 2021). This variable is measured using items related to religious attendance (on a 7-point scale) and religious importance (on a 4-point scale) from a time-series dataset spanning from 1981 to 2022, constructed by merging survey waves of the European Value Study (EVS) and World Value Survey (WVS).⁹ Additional explanatory variables are considered to mitigate omitted variable bias, as discussed in the robustness checks below. Table 1 summarizes descriptive statistics for the variables used in this study.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics.

Statistic	N	Mean	St. Dev.	Min	Max
Violence by muslims	625	0.3	0.6	0	3
GRD against muslims	625	4.3	4.4	0	18
Population	625	15.8	2.0	10.3	19.6
GDP per capita	625	26.5	1.9	22.1	30.4
Youth bulge	625	24.8	3.2	17.3	33.7
Support for religion	625	9.5	4.1	2	17
Violence by christian groups	625	2.1	2.4	0	10
Muslim minority percent	625	3.2	4.4	0.02	24.1
Economic inequality	625	29.3	3.7	21.0	38.5
Land Area (logged)	625	11.5	2.6	5.1	16.0
Populist party support	625	5.2	6.7	0.0	47.9
Religious attendance	625	2.6	1.1	1.1	5.9
Religious importance	625	1.6	0.4	0.9	2.6
Majority group percent	625	73.2	14.5	29.1	95.3
Bureaucratic quality	625	3.3	0.8	2.0	4.0

Model Choice

The data used in this paper consists of 625 country-years nested in 25 countries. This data structure allows to employ novel within-between random effect model (REWB), a special type of hybrid model (Bell et al., 2019; Fairbrother, 2014; Schmidt-Catran, 2016). Both dependent variables are treated as continuous. This model enables us to simultaneously estimate the effect of within-country changes in GRD/GSR (as done by fixed effects) as well as the impacts of between-country differences. Thus, the REWB framework combines the strengths of both fixed effects and random effects models (Bell & Jones, 2015). Classical fixed effect models, by using cluster dummies, discard unobserved heterogeneity, which mitigates the endogeneity problem associated with clustered data (deriving from time-invariant confounders) and helps to determine the net effect of explanatory variables. However, cluster dummies make it impossible to predict between-country effects as well as the effects of time-invariant variables.

On the other hand, although random effect models divide the unexplained residual variance into between-group variance and within-group variance, they do not distinguish between within and between effects. Instead, random effects models estimate a weighted average of the within-group and between-group effects, which makes meaningful interpretation difficult (Bell et al., 2019). Furthermore, random effects models assume that the error term is independent of the predictors, which makes it more susceptible to omitted variable bias. The REWB model at least partially addresses the limitations associated with both models: Firstly, it offers estimates that match those obtained through standard fixed effects without relying on cluster dummies, enabling the prediction of between-group effects. Secondly, estimating between-group effects accounts for any covariation between predictors and omitted variables, which would bias estimates from random effect models. Finally, it allows for the incorporation of random intercepts at different levels of clustering. This accounts for the data’s multi-level nature addresses potential issues related to unobserved heterogeneity and heteroskedasticity and prevents the artificial suppression of standard errors (Bell & Jones, 2015). The model of this paper is specified as follows:

Y_{i j} = β_{0} + β_{1} (X_{i j} - {\bar{X}}_{j}) + β_{2} {\bar{X}}_{j} + β_{3} Z_{j} + β_{4} t i m e + u_{j} + e_{i j}

(1)

The model has two levels: (i) country-years nested in (j) countries. ${\bar{X}}_{j}$ represents the between components of this study, which is the cross-time mean of the main independent variables of this study, GRD and GSR. Thus β₂ reflects the between-country effects of these variables. $(X_{i j} - {\bar{X}}_{j})$ represents within part of the model and is calculated by subtracting the country means from the country-year values of main predictors. β₁ stands for “within” effects of GRD and GSR. The control variables of this study are represented by the vector Z_j, β₃ reflecting corresponding coefficients.¹⁰ The model also integrates a linear time variable to control for potential spurious associations between the within-country estimates and common time trends in the data. Finally, the random part of the model contains between-country residuals (u_j) and within-country residuals (e_ij) separately, which makes standard errors more accurate (Bell et al., 2019).

The GRD against Muslims and GSR lagged by one year to precede the dependent variable and decrease the simultaneity bias. The key dependent and independent variables in this research exhibit complete data, whereas missing data within control variables are addressed through multiple imputation and linear interpolation, employing the appropriate method for each case. Therefore, it is expected that the model estimates remain free from potential biases due to missing data.

Results

Table 2 presents the results from the REWB model with violence by Muslim minorities as a dependent variable. The first column displays the results of the null model, which contains between and within-country variance without any predictors. The variation among countries outweighs the variation within countries, which can be expected considering the path dependencies within countries as well as the rare occurrences of violent events. Importantly, despite its relatively small number compared to between-countries, within-country variances in the Muslim minority violence still form a substantive part of the total variance (approximately 20%) that many studies seek to account for. The existence of substantive and significant variation within and between countries emphasizes the importance of explicitly modeling both effects.

Table 2.

REWB Models for Violence by Muslim Minorities Against Majority Groups.

	M0	M1	M2	M3
Muslim minority percent		0.058***(0.018)	0.051***(0.018)	0.054***(0.019)
Economic inequality		0.011(0.007)	0.013*(0.007)	0.013*(0.007)
Youth bulge		0.003(0.007)	−0.002(0.008)	−0.002(0.008)
Land Area (logged)		0.013(0.021)	0.011(0.021)	0.012(0.021)
Population (ln)		0.062(0.056)	0.062(0.055)	0.059(0.056)
GDP per Capita (ln)		0.005(0.016)	0.005(0.016)	0.004(0.016)
Time		0.005**(0.003)	0.002(0.003)	0.001(0.003)
GRD (within/lagged)			0.042***(0.013)	0.041***(0.013)
GRD (between/lagged)			0.033(0.025)	0.038(0.031)
Support for religion (within-lagged)				0.012(0.017)
Support for Religion (between-lagged)				−0.009(0.033)
Constant	0.298***(0.104)	−1.611*(0.867)	−1.596*(0.837)	−1.483(0.913)
Number of country-years	625	625	625	625
Number of countries	25	25	25	25
Variance country-year	0.058***	0.053***	0.052***	0.052***
Variance country level	0.269***	0.287***	0.263***	0.280***
Mariginal/Conditional R2	0.000/0.821	0.210/0.877	0.252/0.877	0.256/0.883
AIC	129.136	123.399	127.607	142.408

Note. Standard errors in brackets. *p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

In model M1, all control variables, as well as a variable for linear time trend, are included. Muslim minority percentage and time variable significantly and positively affect Muslim minority violence. Although the remaining control variables demonstrate effects in the anticipated direction, they do not attain commonly accepted thresholds of statistical significance. Overall, the reduction in AIC, along with the rise in both marginal and conditional R², indicates that they improve the model and contribute to the explanation of Muslim minority violence. Model M2 adds the GRD variable to test the first hypothesis of this study.¹¹ The inclusion of this variable renders a positive coefficient for economic inequality significant at the 10% level.

The model reveals that GRD positively affects Muslim minority violence, but this effect is within countries (with a statistical significance at 1%), not between them. The addition of GRD improves the model, as reflected by an increase of marginal R² - variances explained by fixed effects (independent variables) – and a reduction in AIC.

The next step is to test whether the within-country GRD effect persists when GSR is controlled. Again, model M3 exhibits a significant improvement compared to M2 (LR test: p < .004). The positive within-effect of GRD still holds at the 1% significance level, and the effect should be considered substantive (see also Figure A6 and A7 in the appendix for a comparison of standardized coefficients). Figure 2 depicts the marginal effect of GRD. Within countries, for a one-unit increase in GRD, violence by Muslims is expected to increase by 0.042 units, holding all other variables constant. To put it another way, as the value of GRD shifts from its minimum to maximum, the violence by Muslim minorities index increases by approximately 10%. Thus, the results confirm the first hypothesis (H1), claiming a positive association between GRD against Muslim minorities and violence perpetrated by these minorities.

Figure 2.

Marginal effect of GRD on Muslim violence based on Model M3, 95% confidence interval shaded in light blue.

Table 3 reports the results of the second analysis, with violence committed by majority religious groups as the dependent variable. Similar to the analysis above, the null model in the first column (M4) shows that most of the total variance is explained by between-country variances (approx. 82%). However, it indicates a significant within and between-country variation again, which again makes the separation of variances theoretically and methodically relevant. Model M5, which incorporates all control variables, reveals several statistically significant coefficients in the expected direction. Notably, the size of the Christian religious groups and the level of religious importance demonstrate a negative association (at 1% and 5% significance levels) with violence committed by these groups.

Table 3.

REWB Models for Violence by Majority Religious Groups Against Muslims.

	M4	M5	M6	M7
Muslim minority percent		0.186**(0.077)	0.153**(0.077)	0.155**(0.079)
Youth bulge		0.018(0.028)	0.001(0.028)	0.0002(0.028)
Land Area (logged)		0.148*(0.081)	0.135*(0.081)	0.133(0.082)
Population (ln)		0.045(0.247)	0.024(0.247)	0.028(0.250)
GDP per Capita (ln)		−0.022(0.061)	−0.020(0.061)	−0.019(0.061)
Populist party support		0.021***(0.007)	0.021***(0.007)	0.021***(0.007)
Religious attendance		−0.195(0.131)	−0.141(0.131)	−0.141(0.131)
Religious importance		−1.059***(0.332)	−1.112***(0.332)	−1.111***(0.332)
Majority group percent		−0.040**(0.017)	−0.047***(0.017)	−0.048***(0.017)
Bureaucratic quality		0.154**(0.064)	0.201***(0.066)	0.201***(0.066)
Time		0.044***(0.013)	0.034**(0.013)	0.033**(0.013)
GRD (within/lagged)			0.138***(0.050)	0.138***(0.050)
GRD (between/lagged)			0.122(0.113)	0.079(0.139)
Support for religion (within-lagged)				−0.027(0.063)
Support for Religion(between-lagged)				0.081(0.145)
Constant	2.054***(0.453)	3.122(4.398)	3.972(4.362)	3.411(4.528)
Number of country-years	625	625	625	625
Number of countries	25	25	25	25
Variance country-year	1.080***	0.742***	0.735***	0.736***
Variance country level	5.091***	5.601***	5.370***	5.557***
Mariginal/Conditional R2	0.000/0.825	0.278/0.916	0.288/0.914	0.279/0.916
AIC	1945.88	1780.88	1782.96	1792.16

Note. Standard errors in brackets. *p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01

Further discussion of these findings and their implications can be found in the subsequent “Discussion” section. The size of Muslim minority communities, support for populist parties, countries’ geographical space, and bureaucratic quality positively and significantly correlated with violence by majority groups. Model M6 introduces within-between GRD effects to test the second hypothesis of this paper. The addition of these variables contributes to the explanation of level 1 variance (marginal R²).

Much like in model M2 presented in the preceding table, while GRD exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on violence committed by majority groups within countries, the positive impact between countries fails to attain any conventional threshold of statistical significance. In complete model M7, we include the estimate for GSR to test hypothesis 3 (H3) and also assess whether the influence of GRD still persists. The effect of GSR is negative within countries but positive between countries. Nevertheless, neither of these effects reaches statistical significance, which fails to confirm the third hypothesis. On the other hand, the positive impact of GRD within states, significant at the 1% level, still persists in the full model. Again, this effect (0.138) can also be deemed as substantial considering the 10-point scale for the outcome variable. Within countries, shifting GRD from its minimum to its maximum value leads to an 11% increase (from 1.51 to 2.62) in violence by majority groups. The Figure 3 illustrates this effect. Hence, these results strongly support the second hypothesis, stating the positive association between GRD and violence by majority groups.

Figure 3.

Marginal effect of GRD on majority violence based on Model M7, 95% confidence interval shaded in light orange.

Robustness and Further Analyses

Several additional analyses were conducted to check the robustness of the results. First, as previously noted, the REWB model provides a framework for incorporating time-varying variables, similar to a random effects model, while also controlling time-invariant unobserved differences between countries, akin to a fixed effect model. However, although the within-component of the model mitigates the risk of endogeneity due to time-invariant variables, the omission of key time-variant variables would result in biased estimates. Thus, the concerns regarding the omitted variables bias were addressed by controlling additional variables considered in previous empirical studies examining the causes of religious violence, such as the number of terrorist attacks over the past year, religious fractionalization, education level, and youth unemployment rate. All the key results presented in the complete models (M3 and M7) remain robust (see Table A1 in the appendix).

However, it is still likely that we fail to include variable(s) that affect dependent and independent variables. In order to learn how strong an unobserved confounding variable(s) should be to clear away estimates of main independent variables, following Cinelli and Hazlett (2020), we implemented a number of sensitivity analyses. The results demonstrate that to eliminate the effect of GRD on violence by Muslims, the omitted variable(s) should have a greater effect than key predictors that are significant in both theoretical and empirical contexts, such as the Muslim minority size or economic inequality (more than three times). Similarly, to nullify the association between GRD and violence used by majority groups, the effect of confounding variable(s) should exceed twice the size of the Muslim minority percentage or three times that of the majority percentage (see Figures A10, A11 in the appendix for contour plots illustrating the results of these analyses). Thus, although these scenarios are still likely and do not completely alleviate concerns regarding omitted bias, they do help mitigate them.

Second, the REWB model does not alleviate endogeneity bias originating from reverse causation, which is a significant concern given the nature of our research question. A Granger causality test was performed to examine the directionality of the effects of the main independent variables in this study. If the lagged value of the GRD significantly predicts the Muslim/majority violence after the lagged value of the dependent variable is controlled, while the reverse is not observed, then the GRD is considered to “Granger cause” Muslim/majority violence.

The Granger causality test results confirm that the direction of the relationship, as posited in this paper. Specifically, the lagged value of GRD significantly predicts Muslim (p < .05) or majority violence (p < .001) after accounting for the lagged value of the dependent variable, while the reverse relationships are not observed at the 5% level. Third, we truncated the data (removed observations that were 1.5 times the IQR above the third quartile and with a Z score greater than 2) and re-ran the same models to evaluate the potential impact of extreme outliers on our results (Table A3 in the appendix). Fourth, different measures for both types of violence are employed, relying on a narrow definition of violence (Table A6 in the appendix).¹² Fifth, although estimates of mixed models are found to be strongly resistant to violation of distributional assumptions (Schielzeth et al., 2020), we took the precaution of re-running the complete model M3 with a three-scale Muslim violence measure as a dependent variable.¹³ This time, we utilized a generalized linear mixed model with a logit link function, following the conversion of the measure of Muslim violence to a binary format (Table A3 in the appendix). Furthermore, even though, in general, the models seem to satisfy critical assumptions, clustered standard errors are used to increase the robustness of the results (Table A2 in the appendix).¹⁴

Finally, additional models were created by disaggregating the multicomponent index of GRD into its individual items to check whether the results give additional proof for the key findings and to search for important specific policies that account for the effect of GRD on Muslim minority-related violence. Out of 23 discriminatory religious policies implemented in Western countries, 10 of them significantly support the theoretical arguments presented in this study (see Table A11 in the appendix). Restrictions on access to food appropriate for religious dietary requirements (halal) and Muslim believers’ access to clergy (imam) seem to be crucial policies that drive Muslims to use RMSV. The rise in violence by majority groups, on the other hand, appears to be significantly influenced by restrictions on public observance of religious festivals, access to Muslim religious leaders, and some of their religious practices. Moreover, discriminatory religious policies, such as the surveillance of Muslims by governments, anti-religious propaganda in official/semi-official government publications, and the failure of the government to protect Muslim minorities against violence, have a positive impact on the violence used by majority Christian groups against members of Muslim minorities (at 0.001 significance level).

The Case of the United Kingdom

The large-N analysis through the novel application of the REWB model in the previous section and the results of within-country effects confirm the arguments of this paper. Nevertheless, complementing the analysis with a comparative case study would enhance the robustness of the findings further by mitigating bias deriving from confounding and reverse causation. Therefore, in this section, we briefly examine the British case using the synthetic control method to check whether the results are consistent with the large-N analysis presented earlier.

Following the 9/11 attacks, many Western countries have implemented a wide range of new anti-terrorism measures. The United Kingdom represents a case of post-9/11 development towards a progressively assertive set of anti-terrorism measures, which includes restrictions on religion that extend mere security concerns (Jarvis & Lister, 2013). Indeed, the UK is one of the few countries in Europe that implement a “full battery of regulatory responses” that endanger civil rights (Christensen & Aars, 2019). The Home Office’s well-known CONTEST program, introduced first in 2003 and revised again and made public in 2006, constitutes an overarching framework for the extension of counter-terrorism measures at the policy level. Its goal is to “reduce the risk to the UK and its interests (Government, 2011)” It has four primary objectives: “Prevent,” “Prepare,” “Protect,” and “Pursue.” Among these, originally named “Prevent from Violent Extremism,” has encountered extensive criticism from academia, the public, and experts alike (Horne & Bestvater, 2016). It is designed for ‘increasing the resilience and addressing the grievances of communities, and … Identifying vulnerable individuals, as well as challenging and disrupting ideologies sympathetic to violent extremism ‘ (Thomas, 2010, p. 444). It has been criticized due to justification of state intervention in matters of beliefs as well as exclusively stigmatizing and alienating large Muslim communities by labeling them as “suspected communities” (Awan, 2012; Lowe, 2017), which reflected in extensive surveillance and monitoring of Muslim communities, extended periods of pre-charge detention (Qurashi, 2018), and increase in the amount of funding under this program, allocated to local places with a higher number of Muslims (Jarvis & Lister, 2013).

We believe that the CONTEST program is a suitable case for this study as it attracts wide attention from society due to its widespread implementation to the extent of being known by a large segment of society through engaging, for example, local cooperations, schools, universities, and medical institutions. It is also a concrete overarching program that increases GRD against Muslims suddenly, which is also reflected in our data with the rise in discrimination items found in the previous section to significantly predict violence, such as extensive surveillance and access to clergy, and arrest and detention of religious figures. In addition, this comprehensive program was introduced and made public at a certain time, allowing us to use it as manipulation. Importantly, apart from the change in GRD, within-UK variation in majority and Muslim violence in our dataset also enables us to test the arguments of this paper.

To create a control case for the UK, we employ the synthetic control method, which was developed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (Abadie et al., 2015) and serves as a linkage between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, offering an objective method for selecting comparison units in the context of comparative case studies. The method creates a weighted average from a set of control countries based on covariates before the treatment in 2003 to create a simulated or “synthetic” UK. This data-driven approach prevents the selection of control cases subjectively (in contrast to the difference in difference method) and calculating weight from the pretreatment period eliminates the risk of p-hacking.

Furthermore, it transparently presents the weights of control units so that one can validate them. However, it might not yield meaningful estimates if the pretreatment outcome and covariates of synthetic control and the UK do not closely match (Abadie et al., 2015).

Therefore, a novel augmented synthetic method offering a solution for the poor matching of pretreatment variables (by using an outcome model to de-bias the estimate) developed by Ben-Michael et al. (2021)is used in this study to create a suitable synthetic UK.

It is important to note that, as mentioned above, the UK is not a unique case involving GRD as a part of security strategy in the West after 9/11, but its overarching, large-scale, and “instrumentalist”¹⁵ CONTEST program which attracts strong attention from and affects various parts of society is likely to constitute an efficient treatment.

However, countries in the donor pool should not have similar treatment. Therefore, after a careful literature review, countries that could possibly be considered to have similar programs are excluded. Moreover, as suggested by Abadie et al. (2015) we excluded countries experiencing idiosyncratic shocks that could affect the outcome of interest.

Following these criteria, the first analysis excluded the United States, France, and Denmark. In the second analysis, additional countries, including Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland, were excluded to enhance robustness. The control variables utilized in the previous analyses, including GRD, were employed to increase the similarity between the synthetic UK and the UK before the treatment. The lagged value of the dependent variables was also added as a standard practice in the synthetic control method.

Table 4 reports average treatment effects on both types of violence, first under Model A1 with exclusions of France, the United States, and Denmark, and then under Model A2, with additional exclusions of the countries mentioned above. In both models, the average treatment effect suggests an increase in majority violence by around 17% and in Muslim violence by approximately 10%. These effects are statistically significant at the 5% and 1% levels, as calculated through the leave-one-unit-out jackknife approach.

Table 4.

The Effect of UK’s CONTEST Program on Muslim and Majority Group Violence 1990–2014.

	A1		A2
	Majority violence	Minority violence	Majority violence	Minority violence
Average treatment effect	1.773***	0.281**	1.768***	0.330***
	(0.575)	(0.133)	(0.159)	(0.019)
Observations	550	550	450	450
Control countries	21	21	17	17

Note. Standard errors in brackets. Controls are included in the analysis, but are not shown in the table. Model A1 is the base model that excludes FRA, US, and DNK. Model A2 further excludes countries from the donor pool for robustness. Standard errors,in parentheses, are calculated via the leave-one-unit-out jackknife approach. *p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01.

Figures on the left-hand side in Figure 4 display the average treatment effect of the UK CONTEST program as the difference (gap) between the estimated counterfactual (from model A1) and the actual level of majority/Muslim violence in the UK. The right-hand panel compares the pre-and post-treatment violence between the UK and its synthetic counterpart. The figures show that the pretreatment outcome trajectory of the UK and the synthetic UK fit well.¹⁶ Increasing the confidence in attributing the change after 2003 and 2006 (when the program was made public) to treatment which enhances confidence in attributing divergence observed in the post-treatment period to the government’s introduction and publicizing of the CONTEST project (in the appendix, see Table A8, A9 for a covariate balance and Figure A12-13 for country weights for both models).

Figure 4.

Differences in majority/Muslim violence between the actual UK and Synthetic UK after the introduction and publicizing of CONTEST, along with 95% jackknife confidence intervals (on the left). Trends in majority/Muslim violence (Right).

As seen, there is a discernible increase in the gap in majority violence post-2003, followed by a decrease in 2005. However, a notable surge reemerged in 2006 when CONTEST was made public.¹⁷ Similarly, preceding 2003, the data shows no occurrence of Muslim violence against majority groups in both the UK and Synthetic UK. Post-2003, the level of Muslim violence increased in the UK while maintaining a relatively lower level in the Synthetic UK.¹⁸ As suggested by Abadie et al. (2015), we also implemented in-time placebos by going back in time from the treatment date and applying our model to an earlier period, like 1996 and 1999. These placebo dates showed no effect (Figure A15 in the appendix) on both types of violence, offering some confidence that deviation after 2003 could be attributed to intensified interreligious group tensions stemming from the UK’s CONTEST project.

Discussion

In unraveling the intricate dynamics between GRD, GSR, and religiously motivated societal violence (RMSV) in Western Europe, our study sheds light on critical aspects that shape the interplay between minority and majority religious groups. The cross-country analysis reveals a positive association between GRD and the level of both violence types, whereas GSR has no significant impact on inter-group violence in the West.

The individual item analyses reveal that the effect of GRD on violence by Muslim minorities derives from the restrictions placed on religious institutions, clergy, and dietary laws. This finding could be partly explained by the fact that communication with imams and being careful about eating halal food are common practices for Muslims (even those who are not very religious¹⁹), making them sensitive to restrictions on these religious institutions, clergy, and practices. On the other hand, the effect of GRD against Muslim minorities on violence by members of the majority religion occurs when the Western governments follow more discriminatory religious policies towards Muslim minorities for the issues widely discussed in public and framed by right-wing political parties in the West (e.g., restrictions on circumcision ceremonies and observance of religious holidays).

In addition, extensive surveillance of minority religious activities and restriction on access to clergy are other policies that seem to drive violence against Muslim minorities. When Western governments increase their restrictive religious policies to more than justifiable levels to securitize Islam, the members of majority religious groups may become more convinced that their security and liberal values are under a serious threat. This conviction, in turn, might increase their anger and intolerance towards Muslim minority groups, making them more prone to violently enforcing these discriminatory policies. If this is the case, then the integration of moderate Muslims into society and increasing the frequency and quality of contact with members of another faith might also help reduce the perceived threat and inter-group prejudices.

Conversely, the findings from the REWB models suggest that GSR does not significantly predict violence by either Muslims or majority religious groups within or between countries in the West. Thus, although GSR, by playing a crucial role in shaping social identity, makes members of the host society more intolerant towards immigrants (Helbling & Traunmüller, 2016) and Muslim women’s headscarves in Europe (Helbling, 2014), according to the results of this study, it does not seem to increase their threat perceptions enough to drive them to use violence against Muslim communities. Regarding the Muslim communities, it might be expected that they evaluate GSR as “injustice” as it gives additional political and financial power to supported religions, which creates an unequal playing field for the religious market (Finke, 2013).

Nevertheless, the lack of significance in the findings of this study could align with Perez et al. (2017) research, suggesting that GSR does not generate “resentment” among religious minorities. This implies that moderate forms of support may not pose a threat as long as religious freedom is protected in the West. Regarding the Muslim communities, the theory of deservingness (Feather, 2015) might provide insight into the lack of significance. Muslims, as a newcomer, may view their position differently from the majority Christian groups, considering support for the majority religion as fair and deserved and GSR as another part of their integration process. It is important to note that it is difficult to interpret non-finding, and there might be several explanations, including characterizes of the data (e.g., low within and between variations of this variable), and arguments provided above are just a subset of the potential explanations.

The findings also contribute to the discussion of the ambivalent relationship between religiosity and tolerance, although it has not been the focus of this paper. An increase in average religious importance among majority religious groups is associated with a decrease in violence against Muslims, supporting the results of the study by Fox et al. (2021). This would have significant implications for minority-majority religious group relations in the West such as the impact of religiosity on out-group behavior and the potential search of Christians for a partnership with other religious groups to compete with secular actors to influence society and politics.²⁰

Conclusion

Does GRD against Muslim minorities and GSR affect RMSV between Muslim minorities and majority Christian groups in Western countries? A cross-national analysis of 25 Western countries from 1990 to 2014 shows that, within countries, GRD positively influences the level of both types of violence, while GSR seems to pose no security threat to Western countries. The robustness of the results persists across various sensitivity analyses. Applying the augmented synthetic control method, we leverage a CONTEST program in the UK as a case to complement our large N analysis and check the robustness of the findings. The results of the case analysis reveal that introducing and publicizing the CONTEST program led to a widening gap in both types of violence between the UK and the synthetic UK, driven by a higher surge in violence in the UK after the intervention.

Our study has limitations concerning model constraints, endogeneity, and the data. We employed lagged versions of the independent variables, GRD and GSR, and the Granger causality test to mitigate endogeneity bias resulting from reverse causation. However, using lagged independent variables necessitates making significant untestable assumptions about (lack of) temporal dynamics among unobserved variables, appropriate lag length, and reverse causality (Bellemare et al., 2017). Therefore, despite the power of the REWB model and various sensitivity analyses presented above, concerns about simultaneity and confounding bias might still exist. Furthermore, while examining the British case using the augmented synthetic control method improves the robustness of the findings, the reliance on yearly data restricts our ability to differentiate the impact of CONTEST from other factors that could affect RMSV. To reduce the omitted variable bias, we incorporated the identical variables used in the REWB models into our synthetic control models (along with prior terrorist attacks), but analyzing monthly data might help further reduce this bias and give a more nuanced understanding of the case. Therefore, while this study provides substantial support for the argument that GRD influences RMSV, we should refrain from asserting a definitive causal relationship and acknowledge the possibility of reverse causation.

This article contributes to the literature in several ways. The findings support previous studies demonstrating that GRD against religious minorities increases the risk of violence (Akbaba & Taydas, 2011; Saiya, 2019; Saiya & Manchanda, 2020; Saiya & Scime, 2015). In addition, perpetrator disaggregated data on RMSV provided in the RASM3 minority-specific dataset allowed us to extend these studies by examining the effect of GRD on violent actions committed by both Muslim and majority Christian groups against each other. This also provided a better understanding of the motives behind the violence against individuals or groups of another faith tradition. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of both Islamic and majority violence in the West by highlighting the impact of GRD and GSR together provides us with a more comprehensive picture regarding the societal implications of different religious policies.

Finally, this paper also presents some policy implications for counter-strategies against Islamic and right-wing violence in Western countries. Generally, ensuring religious freedom and creating a tolerant atmosphere between two religious groups seems to be an effective strategy for preventing extremism. Nevertheless, if governments tend to restrict Muslim minorities, they may benefit from implementing diverse religious policies, for example, by restricting religious activities such as conversion and proselytizing and giving freedom to some religious institutions. Moreover, Western governments need to be careful when dealing with the growing public pressure, especially for securitizing Islam and placing restrictions on the display of Muslim religious symbols, as their steps towards restrictions on these issues seem to further enhance the perceived cultural and security threat of the majority religious groups, which drive them to commit violence.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Government Religious Discrimination, Support of Religion, and Muslim Minority-Related Societal Violence in Western Democracies

Supplemental Material for Government Religious Discrimination, Support of Religion, and Muslim Minority-Related Societal Violence in Western Democracies by Osman Suntay in Comparative Political Studies

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Richard Traunmüller, Constantin Ruhe, and Oguzhan Turkoglu for their helpful feedback and comments. I would like to also sincerely thank three anonymous reviewers and editors at CPS very much for their kind, detailed, and helpful comments that greatly improved the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number 439346934.

ORCID iD

Osman Suntay

Data Availability Statement

Replication materials and code can be found at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/05MX9G (Suntay, 2024).

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biography

Osman Suntay is a doctoral student and research assistant at the Department of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt. He obtained his MA degree in Political Science from the University of Mannheim. His research interests primarily revolve around political sociology and social and political conflict, with a particular emphasis on quantitative methods. More specifically, he is interested in topics such as immigration policies, minority discrimiantion, social identity, drivers of religious extremism, and elites' role in social and political conflicts.

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Supplementary Material

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Government Religious Discrimination,Support of Religion,and Muslim Minority-Related Societal Violence in Western Democracies

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Some Definitions

Discrimination, Grievances, and Religiously Motivated Violence

Role of Religious Identity in the GRD-Violence Link

Discrimination and Muslim Minority Violence in the West

Who to Blame

Discrimination Against Muslim Minorities and Violence Used by Majority Groups

GSR and Religiously Motivated Violence

Data and Method

Controls

Model Choice

Results

Robustness and Further Analyses

The Case of the United Kingdom

Discussion

Conclusion

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Government Religious Discrimination, Support of Religion, and Muslim Minority-Related Societal Violence in Western Democracies

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Data Availability Statement

Supplemental Material

Notes

Author Biography

References

Supplementary Material