scholarly journals The Role of Education, Religiosity and Development on Support for Violent Practices among Muslims in Thirty-Five Countries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Gullickson ◽  
Sarah Ahmed

Despite widespread scholarly interest in values and attitudes among Muslim populations, relatively little work has focused on specific attitudes popularly thought to indicate anti-modern or anti-liberal tendencies within Islam. In this article, we use data from the Pew Research Center from 2008-2012 to examine support for violent practices among Muslims in thirty-five countries. Support for violent practices is defined by three questions on the acceptability of killing apostates, the stoning of adulterers, and severe corporal punishment for thieves. Using multilevel models that capture country-level variability, we analyze the relationship between support for violent practices and education, religiosity, and development. In general, we find that support for violent practices is less common among individuals with more education and less religiosity and who come from more developed countries. However, when we examine variation across countries, we see evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the association of education and religiosity with support for violent practices. We find that education is more liberalizing in more liberal countries and in less developed countries. The effects of religiosity are also related to country-level context but vary depending on how religiosity is measured. Overall, the variation we observe across countries calls into question a civilizational approach to studying values among Muslim populations and points to a more detailed multiple modernities approach.

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260429
Author(s):  
Aaron Gullickson ◽  
Sarah Ahmed

Despite widespread scholarly interest in values and attitudes among Muslim populations, relatively little work has focused on specific attitudes popularly thought to indicate anti-modern or anti-liberal tendencies within Islam. In this article, we use data from the Pew Research Center from 2008-2012 to examine support for violent practices among Muslims in thirty-five countries. Support for violent practices is defined by three questions on the acceptability of killing apostates, the stoning of adulterers, and severe corporal punishment for thieves. Using multilevel models that capture country-level variability, we analyze the relationship between support for violent practices and education, religiosity, and development. In general, we find that support for violent practices is less common among individuals with more education and less religiosity and who come from more developed countries. However, when we examine variation across countries, we see evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the association of education and religiosity with support for violent practices. We find that education is more liberalizing in more liberal countries and in less developed countries. The effects of religiosity are also related to country-level context but vary depending on how religiosity is measured. Overall, the variation we observe across countries calls into question a civilizational approach to studying values among Muslim populations and points to a more detailed multiple modernities approach.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016402752095363
Author(s):  
Harris Hyun-soo Kim ◽  
Jong Hyun Jung

Research shows that ageism (systemic discrimination against people because of their age) significantly undermines physical and psychological wellbeing, particularly among older adults. Our aim is to contribute to the literature by investigating whether this negative association varies across national religious context. We estimate multilevel models by drawing on a subset of data (ages 55 and above) from the fourth round of the European Social Survey (2008/2009). We find that ageism is negatively related to measures of wellbeing (happiness, life satisfaction, self-rated health). More importantly, the relationship is less pronounced in countries with higher levels of religiosity. These findings suggest that the country’s religious environment serves as a buffer against deleterious health consequences of ageism for the older population. Our study thus provides additional evidence on ageism as a critical risk factor and sheds novel light on the moderating role of country-level religiosity as a protective factor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Seerat Sohal ◽  
Harsandaldeep Kaur

The present study is an endeavour to broaden the research on the use of social media websites in political campaigns beyond the ambit of developed countries. This article focuses on scrutinizing the role of YouTube during 2014 Indian Parliamentary elections—the first ‘social media’-based elections in India. The methodology of data collection incorporates the content analysis of 147 YouTube-based audio–visual political advertisements, associating the message characteristics (natures, types and appeals) with message reach (number of views) and viewer engagement (types of comments). The results reveal the failure of the viewers to recognize the association between message reach and viewers’ engagement with message characteristics, confirming the ‘marginal’ use of YouTube. However, the study recommends the incorporation of contemporary, Internet-based social media advertising tools along with the traditional tools in the future political marketing campaigns. This article is instrumental for political marketers and consultants in devising political marketing strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 435-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Shore ◽  
Carolin Rapp ◽  
Daniel Stockemer

Health affects nearly all facets of our lives, including the likelihood of getting involved in politics. Focusing on political efficacy, we zoom in on one potential mechanism as to why people in poor health might, for example, stay at home on Election Day. We first look at the ways in which health is related to both people’s perceptions of their abilities to take part in politics (internal political efficacy) as well as the extent to which they believe policymakers are responsive to citizen needs (external political efficacy). Second, we examine how the social policy context intervenes in the relationship between health and political efficacy. Multilevel models using 2014 and 2016 European Social Survey data on roughly 57,000 respondents nested in 21 European countries reveal complex results: while good health, rather unsurprisingly, fosters internal and external political efficacy, more generous welfare states, though associated with higher levels of political efficacy, are not a panacea for remedying political inequalities stemming from individual health differences.


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