Assessing Variation in Tolerance in 23 Muslim-Majority
and Western Countries
SCOTT MILLIGAN
University of Tübingen
ROBERT ANDERSEN AND ROBERT BRYM
University of Toronto
Scholars disagree over whether Islam hinders the development of liberal
democracy in Muslim-majority countries. We contribute to this debate by
assessing the influence of Islam at the individual and national levels on
ethnic, racial, and religious tolerance in 23 countries. Our analyses are
based on a set of multilevel models fitted to World Values Survey data
and national-level contextual information from various sources. Our
findings suggest that people living in Muslim-majority countries tend to
be less tolerant than are those living in Western countries. Although a
significant part of this difference is attributable to variation in level of
economic development and income inequality, Muslim countries remain
less tolerant even after controlling for these factors. On the other hand,
controlling for other individual-level factors, nonpracticing Muslims in
Western countries are more tolerant than are all others in both
Muslim-majority and Western countries. This finding challenges
common claims about the effects of Islam as a religion on tolerance,
suggesting that it is Islamic political regimes—not Islam itself—that
pose problems for social tolerance.
Les chercheurs ont des opinions divergentes à savoir si l’islam freine le
développement d’une démocratie libérale dans les pays à majorité
musulmane. Nous contribuons à ce débat en évaluant l’influence de
l’islam aux niveaux individuel et national sur la tolérance ethnique,
raciale et religieuse dans 23 pays. Nos analyses sont basées sur un
We are grateful to CRS editor Rima Wilkes, former editor Reza Nakhaie, and the anonymous CRS
reviewers for helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Research for this paper was funded by a grant
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (The Social Bases of Democracy
in the Middle East and North Africa).
Robert Brym, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON,
Canada M5S 2J4. E-mail: [email protected]
C 2014 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie
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CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
ensemble de modèles à plusieurs niveaux ajustés en fonction des données
du World Values Survey et de l’information contextuelle au niveau
national ayant été obtenue auprès de diverses sources. Nos constatations
suggèrent que les personnes vivant dans des pays à majorité musulmane
ont tendance à être moins tolérantes que celles vivant dans les pays
occidentaux. Bien qu’une grande partie de cette différence soit
attribuable à la variation du niveau de développement économique et à
l’inégalité de revenu, les pays musulmans demeurent moins tolérants,
même après le contrôle de ces facteurs. En revanche, en contrôlant
d’autres facteurs au niveau individuel, les musulmans non pratiquants
des pays occidentaux sont plus tolérants que tous les autres des pays à
majorité musulmane et des pays occidentaux. Cette constatation s’élève
contre les allégations communes au sujet des effets de l’islam comme
religion sur la tolérance, suggérant que ce sont les régimes politiques
islamiques, et non pas l’islam en soi, qui posent des problèmes en ce qui a
trait à la tolérance sociale.
THIS PAPER CONTRIBUTES to an ongoing debate over the prospects
for liberal democracy in the Muslim world. It examines the association
between (1) Islam at the individual and national levels and (2) racial,
immigrant, and religious tolerance. National economic conditions have
been established as an important component of the development of liberal
democratic traditions in Western countries (Inglehart 1990; Putnam 2007).
However, researchers have almost entirely neglected the degree to which
national economic conditions affect the observed association between the
predominance of Muslims and the prevalence of nonliberal democratic
values (Yuchtman-Ya’ar and Alkalay 2010). We help to fill this gap by discovering if patterns of social tolerance, a characteristic commonly considered important to liberal democracy, are comparable in the Muslim world
and the West and among Muslims and non-Muslims. We do so by fitting
multilevel models to data from 31 surveys administered in 23 countries,
9 Muslim-majority and 14 Western.1
PESSIMISTIC VERSUS OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOKS
Recent political developments in the Middle East and North Africa suggest
an increasing appetite for democracy in the region, but have also failed to
resolve the question of whether liberal democracy will sink deep roots.
Notably, the Egyptian uprising of 2011 was followed by a free and fair
election that was in turn annulled by a military coup, hardly forming a
1.
One might question whether the framing of our research question assumes that we are arguing that
the West is generally more “evolved” than Muslim-majority countries in terms of liberal-democratic
values. We leave such normative discussions to political theorists. Rather than make normative claims
about what constitutes the best type of society, our goal is simply to understand how religion is related
to liberal democracy. As we show in the next section, tolerance is a pillar of liberal democracy, so
exploring the correlates of tolerance is a useful exercise.
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
241
clear pattern of events in terms of direction and pace (Brym et al. 2014). The
future of liberal democracy—a form of government that protects personal,
civil, and political liberties, including equality among citizens regardless
of personal identifiers, such as religion, race, and ethnicity—is even less
clear (Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Przeworski and Limongi 1993).
One opinion is decidedly pessimistic. It is based on the judgment that
a host of cultural and institutional characteristics hinder the development
of democracy in the region (Blaydes and Lo 2011; Fox 2006; Huntington
1993, 1996; Lewis 2009; Lust 2011; Posusney 2004). In this view, Muslimmajority countries are not conducive to liberal democracy because Islam
lacks a liberal democratic tradition. In particular, the lack of separation
between religious and political authority in the Muslim world precludes
the adoption of liberal democracy and makes it difficult for nonreligious
voluntary associations and political parties to flourish.
Geopolitical circumstances presumably reinforce this tendency. In
most of the postcolonial Muslim world, the military has played an outsized role in political affairs, partly because the United States and Western Europe have been eager to secure access to petroleum resources and so
have given substantial financial and military aid to protect and stabilize
autocratic regimes. Moreover, heavy dependence on oil and gas has facilitated the growth of centralized states that are so awash in money that
they do not have to tax their citizens; 11 of 16 Arab countries earn more
than 70 percent of their export revenue from petroleum products (Diamond
2010; Schwartz 2008). Consequently, many citizens fail to develop expectations of accountability from their rulers, who are relatively free to repress,
co-opt, manipulate, and offer minimal concessions to citizens who insist
on popular rule (Luciani 1988; Schwartz 2008). Significantly, just two of
the 11 oil-rich Arab countries, Libya and Bahrain, experienced vigorous
democratic protest in 2011, compared to all five of the Arab countries that
are not rich in oil: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria (Ross 2011).
Optimists question these judgments. They cite survey evidence that
about 80 percent of Arab adults regard democracy as the best form of
government (Braizat 2010; Jamal and Tessler 2008; Norris and Inglehart
2002). They note that even before the Arab Spring, 38 percent of the people
in the world’s Muslim-majority countries lived in electoral democracies
(Puddington 2011). They point to the Arab Spring as evidence that cultural
and institutional resistance to democracy in the Muslim world is anything
but obdurate. Following the 2011 and 2012 elections in Tunisia and Egypt,
fully 45 percent of the people in the world’s Muslim-majority countries
lived in electoral democracies, and given the ongoing turmoil in several
Muslim-majority countries, it seems possible that most Muslims will be
living in electoral democracies in the foreseeable future (Freedom House
2012:14–18; U.S. Census Bureau 2012).
Of course, electoral democracy and liberal democracy are different
things. Elections may be held where freedom of expression, assembly, and
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religion are circumscribed (Zakaria 1997). With barely half the population
of the Middle East and North Africa supporting all three of these freedoms
in 2009 (Andersen, Brym, and Araj 2011), one may credibly maintain that
liberal democracy still has a long and difficult path to traverse before it
becomes widely accepted in the region.
Some recent research supports such qualified pessimism. YuchtmanYa’ar and Alkalay (2010) found little difference between citizens in Western and Muslim-majority countries in their attitude toward democracy,
although they claim this finding is misleading because it fails to take into
account country-level effects. Based on an analysis of data from the World
Values Survey, they argue that a Muslim majority influences political attitudes independently of citizens’ individual attributes. When they took
the religious composition of societies into account, they found that, on
the whole, citizens of Muslim-majority countries were not liberal democratic in their values. Compared to citizens of Western countries, citizens
of Muslim-majority countries only weakly support freedom of speech and
secular and female leadership.
Consistent with Yuchtman-Ya’ar and Alkalay (2010), we find that people living in Muslim-majority countries tend to be less tolerant than those
living in the West. However, we also find that a significant part of this difference is attributable to variation in level of economic development and
income inequality. Compared to most Western countries, Muslim-majority
countries are less developed economically and less equal. Hence, they are
generally less tolerant. This finding supports the optimistic viewpoint regarding the association between Islam and liberal democracy insofar as
it suggests that Islam is a less powerful cause of intolerance than the
pessimists imagine. We add more grist to the optimists’ mill by showing
that, in some Western countries, Muslims tend to be more tolerant than
non-Muslims—evidence that religion per se exerts less influence on tolerance than may at first appear. Nevertheless, we also show that living in
a Muslim-majority country is associated, on average, with greater intolerance, and that this association remains even after controlling for important
economic variables at the individual and national levels.
Before reviewing research on the associations among the main variables in our analysis, we must say a word about tolerance and its centrality
in liberal democracies.
ON TOLERANCE
Majority rule and tolerance of minority rights are the twin pillars of liberal
democracy. Majority rule ensures respect for the will of the citizenry. Tolerance of minority rights prevents the formation of a tyrannical majority,
ensuring that the interests of all citizens are respected to a degree.
Discussions of liberal democracy have always noted the importance
of tolerance (Locke 1659; Mill [1859] 2006; de Tocqueville [1835] 1945).
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
243
However, few Western students of the subject recognize that discussions
of the importance of tolerance originated and were implemented as public
policy in some Muslim-ruled countries before they were in Europe (Sen
2005; see also Kurzman 1998). A century before John Locke wrote his
seminal “Letter on Toleration,” the English passed the Supremacy of the
Crown Act, requiring, in effect, that any Catholic taking public office give
up his religion and swear allegiance to the monarch as the supreme governor of the Church of England. Around the same time in India, Akbar the
Great rescinded the tax on non-Muslims as part of his scheme to integrate
Hindus, Jains, and others into the nobility, thus increasing national unity
and creating an atmosphere of tolerance. If we go back another 400 or 500
years and compare the European Dark Ages with the Islamic Golden Age,
we would arrive at similar conclusions about when and where the theory
and practice of tolerance originated.
Discussions of tolerance first focused on religion. Today, they have
been broadened to include race, ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation, and so on. Recognizing the importance of tolerance to the functioning of liberal democracy, surveys such as the World Values Survey, the
General Social Survey, the European Social Survey, and the Arab Barometer routinely ask questions about respondents’ tolerance of a variety of
minority groups. These questionnaire items have been analyzed in scores
if not hundreds of studies.
Of course, like all survey items, such questions are imperfect. They
may measure socially acceptable attitudes more than practice. Responses
to them may be influenced by the proportion of minority group members
in neighborhoods, enclaves, regions, and entire countries. Such potential
shortcomings can be overcome by research designs that examine behavior,
not just attitudes, and that allow analysts to examine the effects of multiple, nested contexts. In the following analysis, we take national contexts
into account, thus overcoming at least one of these problems, but we acknowledge that better research designs are needed to more convincingly
answer the questions we pose.
RELIGION AND TOLERANCE AT THE INDIVIDUAL
LEVEL: THE MUSLIM/NON-MUSLIM DIVIDE
Before one can consider the possible influence of religious context on
tolerance, a link between religion and attitudes at the individual level
must be established. Abundant research exists on this subject. Stouffer’s
(1955) early study of political tolerance reported a negative relationship
between religious commitment and tolerance in the United States. People who seldom or never attended religious services were significantly
more tolerant than were those who attended religious services regularly.
He also found that social context affected this relationship. For example,
southern Protestants were substantially less tolerant than were northern
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Protestants. The negative relationship between religion and tolerance has
been corroborated repeatedly (Beatty and Walter 1984; Green et al. 1994;
McClosky and Brill 1983; Nunn, Crockett, and Williams 1978; Sullivan et
al. 1982; Wilcox 1987; Wilcox and Jelen 1990). To our knowledge, only one
study has found evidence to the contrary. Eisenstein (2006) suggests that
the effect of religious practice on tolerance is often overstated relative to
the effects of political and psychological factors.
Evidence also suggests the existence of significant differences in social attitudes between Christians and others—including Muslims—with
respect to gender equality, abortion, freedom of sexual preferences, and
other postmaterialist values. Thus, Inglehart and Norris (2003) demonstrated that Hindus and Christians strongly support equality between genders while Muslims and Buddhists oppose it. This relationship holds after
controlling for individual and national characteristics. Inglehart and Norris (2003) also found that the contextual effect of “rational religious traditions” is at least as strong as an individual’s level of religiosity is. Nevertheless, they argue that views about constitutional democracy, including
popular rule, differ little between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Dixon (2008) arrived at similar results. He showed that Turks, who
are nearly all Muslim, support democracy as strongly as do Europeans
outside Turkey, three-quarters of whom are Christian. However, Turks
are more likely to support religious rule and to be intolerant of minorities.
Dixon (2008) speculated that the main difference in public opinion between
Muslims and non-Muslims is due more to level of economic development
than religion—an idea we test.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, INEQUALITY, AND
TOLERANCE
According to the postmaterialist thesis, a high level of social tolerance is
typically found where economic development is advanced because prosperity causes people to worry less about material interests and concern
themselves more with social issues and self-expression (Andersen 2012;
Huber, Rueschemeyer, and Stephens 1993; Inglehart 1990). After all, intolerance often arises from perceived threat. If, for example, people think
their jobs are at risk of being lost to “outsiders,” they are likely to experience hostility toward anyone seen as an outsider. With increasing wealth,
fewer people are threatened in this way, leading to less intolerance (Lipset
1960).
Recent research qualifies this argument. Economic development does
not have a uniform effect across all people within or between countries (Andersen 2012; Andersen and Curtis 2012; Andersen and Fetner
2008). At the individual level, people in less privileged economic positions
are not as likely to be affected by economic prosperity as are people in
more advantaged economic positions. Therefore, in nations with greater
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
245
variation in income between social classes, the effect of economic growth
may not be as strong as it is in nations where there is less discrepancy
in earnings between classes. Thus, nations with a high rate of income
inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient are less tolerant than are
nations with low income inequality, even when economic growth is relatively high (Andersen and Fetner 2008). The postmaterialist thesis suggests an explanation for this phenomenon: If economic growth and development are related to an increase in postmaterialist values, such as
tolerance within countries, then it should also apply within a country to
individuals from certain sectors that are not as well-off economically. In
other words, while economic development is undoubtedly related to higher
overall tolerance, the effect may not be as strong for all people in a society. In countries with a high degree of inequality, tolerance may not
be as high as would otherwise be expected given their level of economic
development.2
How might these considerations apply to Muslims? Individual-level
religious practices are related to political values, as noted earlier. Because people in Muslim-majority countries tend to practice their religion more than people in Western countries do (Pepinsky and Welbourne
2011; Wilson 1997), and because religious people tend to believe that
a higher power will provide for them in times of economic hardship
(Barro and McCleary 2003), relatively few Muslims in Muslim-majority
countries support government intervention to reduce income inequality
(Barro 1999; Esmaeili, Mansouri, and Moshavash 2011; Pepinksi and
Welbourne 2011).3
United Nations data consistently show lower gross domestic product
(GDP) and higher income inequality in Muslim-majority countries than in
Western countries (Timmer and McClelland 2004). Accordingly, we would
not expect to find a high degree of tolerance or strong endorsement of other
liberal democratic values among people in Muslim-majority countries, irrespective of individual religious practices. We would also expect to find
smaller differences in tolerance between people of different religions in the
West than in Muslim-majority countries. Self-selection would presumably
account for part of the cross-national difference: More tolerant people in
Muslim-majority countries may choose to immigrate to countries that more
closely suit their beliefs and values. Additionally, because conditions fostering tolerance are more robust in the West than in Muslim-majority countries, tolerance might “rub off” on immigrants who might otherwise be less
tolerant.
2.
Similarly, inequality is associated with a lower probability of democracy in a country and this pattern
is especially strong in Muslim-majority countries (Barro 1999).
3.
Pepinksi and Welbourne (2011) show that this relationship is particularly strong in countries where
the population is more pious. Davis and Robinson (2006) show that support for “economic communitarianism” occurs at the local level and does not seem to be connected to support for redistributive
economic policy at the national level.
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HYPOTHESES
From our literature review, we derive and test four hypotheses regarding
the relationship between religion and racial, immigrant, and religious tolerance. Our goal is to assess the role of religion on attitudes at both the
individual and societal levels. Our main concern is to evaluate competing claims about the liberal democratic values of Muslims and, therefore,
about the compatibility of liberal democracy and Islam. We thus test the
following hypotheses:
H1: Muslims are generally less tolerant than are non-Muslims. We
also anticipate discovering that, on average, the more religiously
committed will be less tolerant than are the less religiously committed, regardless of their religious identification.
H2: People living in Muslim-majority countries tend to be less tolerant
than are people living in Western countries. We expect this relationship to hold even after controlling for individual-level religious
practice.
H3: The association between religious context and tolerance will diminish after controlling for other important contextual factors. Said
differently, we imagine the function of Islam at the national level
will be partly spurious, reflecting a failure to account for important
confounding variables related to both religious context and democracy. These potentially confounding variables include economic development, income inequality, and ethnic heterogeneity.
H4: Attitudinal differences between Muslims and Christians will be
less pronounced in Western countries than in Muslim-majority
countries. We have two rationales for this hypothesis: (1) a selfselection process takes place in which relatively tolerant Muslims
are more likely than relatively intolerant Muslims to migrate to the
West. (2) Western countries, which are relatively tolerant, may be
more likely than Muslim-majority countries to bring Muslims and
Christians closer in their values.
We now turn to the tests of these hypotheses using data from the
World Values Survey and other sources.
DATA AND VARIABLES
Individual-Level Data
Our individual-level data are from the two most recent waves of the World
Values Survey (1999–2004 and 2005–2008), a set of nationally representative samples. See Table 1 for a list of the countries and descriptive statistics. We use data from all countries for which information on our dependent
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
247
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics by Country
Country
Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Egypt
Indonesia
Indonesia
Iran
Iran
Iraq
Iraq
Jordan
Morocco
Pakistan
Pakistan
Turkey
Turkey
Australia
Brazil
Brazil
Canada
Finland
France
Germany
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
Survey
Year
GDP per
Capita
Gini
1996
2002
2000
2001
2006
2000
2007
2004
2006
2001
2001
2001
2003
2001
2007
2005
1997
2002
2006
2005
2006
1997
2006
2005
2006
2007
2007
2006
2007
2005
2006
704.221
947.821
3,670.780
2,432.337
3,340.951
6,650.239
10,932.409
2,988.352
3,182.088
3,342.600
2,807.114
1,670.741
1,808.752
8,691.955
13,949.651
32,698.435
6,669.680
9,037.932
36,771.238
30,707.946
31,384.652
23,534.160
33,526.329
28,144.014
38,051.810
55,005.356
32,248.006
35,682.124
43,137.650
32,731.846
44,663.472
33.38
36.80
33.00
34.64
35.20
43.92
41.54
34.77
34.77
39.16
40.47
28.70
30.24
43.54
43.92
31.57
51.38
48.60
31.55
25.69
27.94
26.28
28.53
33.99
27.36
24.36
31.44
23.52
31.07
34.64
36.87
Religious
Diversity
Muslim
Majority
Proportion
Tolerant
.25
Yes
.365
.27
.63
Yes
Yes
.658
.509
.85
Yes
.619
.08
Yes
.926
.12
.03
.08
Yes
Yes
Yes
.411
.604
.598
.05
Yes
.526
.77
.43
No
No
.924
.867
.76
.27
.51
.72
No
No
No
No
.928
.785
.570
.827
.34
.19
.19
.16
.52
.64
.66
.72
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
.811
.858
.917
.854
.978
.894
.826
.828
variable is available, resulting in a sample of 23 countries representing 31
different contexts since some countries were sampled twice. After removing
missing observations, the analytical sample size was 25,507 respondents.
Dependent Variable: Racial, Immigrant, and Religious Tolerance
Our dependent variable taps ethnoreligious tolerance. The specific survey
item asks respondents whether they would accept someone as a neighbor
if s/he (1) were a member of a racial minority, (2) were an immigrant, or (3)
practiced a religion different from the respondent’s. If a respondent said
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s/he would not tolerate a neighbor from one of these backgrounds, s/he was
coded as “intolerant.” Only respondents who indicated tolerance toward
all three categories were coded as “tolerant.” This resulted in a binary
dependent variable for which respondents were coded 0 if intolerant and 1
if tolerant, yielding a general measure of tolerant attitudes.4
Religious Practice
The key individual-level independent measure is religious practice that
is measured by a combination of the respondent’s religious denomination
and whether or not s/he claimed to practice regularly. Respondents were
considered to be practicing if they attended religious services at least once
a month. We derived the following categories: practicing Christian, nonpracticing Christian, practicing Muslim, nonpracticing Muslim, and no
religious practice (the reference category). Because of our focus, and because they were few in number, respondents with other religious practices
were excluded from the analysis.
Individual-Level Control Variables
We control for a measure of relative household income that divides respondents into deciles corresponding to the distribution of household income
in their country. The effect of household income is modeled as a quadratic
polynomial to capture a nonlinear relationship with attitudes. We also
control for gender, education (divided into low, medium, and high levels
specific to the education system in each country), marital status (married,
divorced or separated, widowed, and never married), and age (measured
in years).5
Country-Level Variables
To test our hypotheses regarding the role of national context, we focus on
four contextual variables as follows:6
1. Religious composition. Countries are categorized as Muslim if
50 percent or more of the population is Muslim. Otherwise, the
country is considered Western. The information for this variable is
drawn from the Religion and State Database (2011).
4.
We also explored each component of the dependent variable separately and had weaker but similar
results.
5.
Preliminary tests suggested a linear trend between age and tolerant attitudes.
6.
In addition to the contextual variables listed here, we also ran models controlling for other important
social and economic conditions, including measures of political orientation, gender equality, and human
development. Associations between tolerance and the contextual variables not included here failed to
reach statistical significance at p < .05.
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
249
2. Economic prosperity is measured using GDP at purchasing power
parity per capita in thousands of current international dollars. This
measure varies by country and across time. Data are taken from
the World Bank poverty database (World Bank 2011).
3. Income inequality is measured using the Gini coefficient for equivalized household incomes after taxes and transfers. Data are taken
from the World Bank poverty database (World Bank 2011).
4. Religious diversity is measured using an adaptation of the Herfindahl index. The index of religious diversity is calculated as the sum
of the squared proportion of each of the religious groups in a society.
Formally, diversity is given by:
D=
N
p2i ,
i=1
where p is the proportion of each i religion in a society and N is the number
of religions. In short, this measure accounts for the share of each major
religion (Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, other, and none)
in each country. It indicates the probability that, within a given society,
any two randomly selected people will identify with the same religion.
Information on the proportion of adherents of each religion was taken
from the Religion and State Database (2011).
STATISTICAL METHODS
We start by fitting a series of binary logit models predicting tolerance
for each country separately. These models provide preliminary evidence
for country differences, especially between Muslim-majority and Western
countries. Our main analysis, however, relies on a series of multilevel logistic regression models. Multilevel models allow us to assess variation in the
dependent variable systematically, both within and across countries, and
control for the correlated errors and unequal error variance associated with
within-country clustering of respondents (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). To
accomplish this goal, all models specify a variance component for clustering at the national level. In other words, the intercept is allowed to vary
by country. We also allow the effect of religious practice to vary randomly
across countries to account for the differential relationship of religion on
tolerance in different national contexts.7
7.
Initial models included variance components for individuals nested within surveys rather than countries. These models failed to consistently converge on reliable estimates. We also tried to estimate
models that explicitly accounted for the fact that some countries had two surveys. These models also
failed to converge. We also carried out several robustness tests to ensure that our final models were
not unduly influenced by outlying countries. For example, models that removed data for each country
on its own gave substantively similar results to those reported from our final models. Also, patterns in
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CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
Model 1 examines differences in tolerance between levels of individual
religious practice and other individual-level predictors. This is the baseline
model. It allows us to examine the extent to which attitudes differ across
countries before taking into account contextual variables. Model 2 adds the
Muslim-majority/Western context variable. Model 3 builds on this model
by adding the other three contextual variables. Model 4 allows individualand country-level religion to interact in their effects on tolerance.
RESULTS
Figure 1 explores levels of tolerance—both average levels and religious
differences—for each country. The horizontal lines display the 95 percent
confidence intervals for the predicted probabilities that an individual is
tolerant.8 These fitted probabilities were derived from individual country
logit models that hold all individual-level variables in our analysis to their
means (Fox and Andersen 2006). We start with panel A that demonstrates
overall levels of tolerance. We see that Western countries tend to have
much higher average levels of tolerance than do Muslim-majority countries; their confidence intervals tend to fall farther to the right. Clearly,
fundamental differences in tolerance exist between Muslim-majority and
Western countries, even after controlling for individual-level variables.
Another important feature of Figure 1 is the relatively small deviation in tolerance across Western countries relative to the deviation across
Muslim-majority countries. As Figure 1 shows, Morocco is the most tolerant Muslim-majority country, followed by Turkey. Pakistan, Indonesia,
Iran, Iraq, and Bangladesh are next. Egypt and Jordan are the least tolerant of the Muslim-majority countries in our sample. Western countries
that are racially diverse or have a high proportion of immigrants tend to be
most tolerant, although France is a clear exception to this pattern. France’s
predicted level of tolerance is lower than or equal to that of four of the
Muslim-majority countries. Sweden is the most tolerant on average, with
Canada and then Norway, Australia, and Switzerland exhibiting about the
same level of expected tolerance.
The remaining panels in Figure 1 show the predicted probability of
tolerance for different religious practices by country, net of the individuallevel variables in the study. Several noteworthy patterns stand out. First,
this figure indicates that Muslims in Muslim-majority countries are no
less tolerant on average than are Christians in Muslim-majority countries
(cf. Hadj-Moussa 2004; Sajoo 2013). Moreover, Muslims who live in the
West demonstrate patterns of tolerance similar to those of Christians in
the effect of religion from the individual country logit models were consistent with the results from the
multilevel models.
8.
Because of the control variables in the models used to predict the intervals shown in Figure 1, values
in the figure do not exactly correspond to values found in Table 1.
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
251
Figure 1
Ninety-five Percent Confidence Intervals for Predicted
Probability of Tolerant Attitudes by Country and by Religious
Practices across Countries. Countries are Divided into Muslim
and West and are Ordered According to Level of Tolerance
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CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
the West. In fact, in some Western countries where Christians are relatively intolerant, Muslims are more tolerant than Christians. In Italy, for
example, Christians are in the bottom half of the distribution for Western
countries, while Muslims are near the top of the distribution. Similarly,
in France, where Christians, both practicing and nonpracticing, are least
tolerant, the Muslim population is more tolerant on average. Conversely,
some countries where the Christian population is relatively tolerant, such
as Sweden, also have a Muslim population that is relatively intolerant.
Taken together, these findings suggest that it may not be religion, per se,
that is driving differences in tolerance between Muslim and Western countries, but rather one or more contextual characteristics. To gain further
purchase on this question, and thus more rigorously test our hypotheses,
we turn to the multilevel logit models.
Table 2 displays the multilevel logistic regression coefficients predicting ethnoreligious tolerance toward people from backgrounds that differ
from one’s own. Model 1 addresses differences in tolerance between different religious practices. Recall that this model explicitly takes into account
the clustering of individuals within countries. In contrast to what was expected from our first hypotheses, Model 1 indicates that Muslims are the
most tolerant group. The odds of a practicing Muslim expressing tolerance
are 1.85 times higher (e0.617 = 1.85) than they are for the nonreligious on
average. For nonpracticing Muslims, the odds are almost four times higher
(e1.374 = 3.95) than for the nonreligious, controlling for the other variables
in the model. Interestingly, the odds of tolerance among both practicing
and nonpracticing Christians are not significantly different from the nonreligious. In short, although Model 1 confirms the existence of differences
between religious practices with respect to tolerance, the findings contradict our hypothesis: Muslims, not Christians, tend to be most tolerant when
the difference is considered within countries. At this point, however, these
observed differences between Christians and Muslims do not take into
account the influence of national context. As we show momentarily, the
pattern changes somewhat when we take into account where people live.
Model 2 tests for differences between residing in the West versus living in a Muslim-majority country. As expected, living in a Muslim-majority
country is associated with a lower likelihood of tolerance, with the odds
of Westerners reporting ethnoreligious tolerance being on average 10.89
times higher than that of people living in Muslim-majority countries (e2.388
= 10.89). Differences between religious practices are comparable to the
differences reported in Model 1. In contrast to our findings for hypothesis
1, then, we now find clear evidence supporting hypothesis 2: People living in Muslim-majority countries tend to be less tolerant than are people
living in the West. Nonetheless, the addition of the Muslim-West context
variable significantly influences the variance components for the religious
practices variable. Most noteworthy is the drastic decline in the variance
component for the effects of nonpracticing Muslim, further suggesting that
Individual-level
Intercept
Sex
Female
Male
Age
Marital status
Single
Married
Divorced
Widowed
Education
Low
Medium
High
Income
Income2
Religious practice
Nonpracticing Christian
Practicing Christian
Nonpracticing Muslim
Practicing Muslim
No religious practice
0
0.005 (0.033)
−0.0006 (0.001)
0
0.049 (0.041)
0.035 (0.088)
−0.094 (0.087)
0
0.395*** (0.037)
0.565*** (0.047)
12.053*** (2.88)
−6.817* (2.687)
0.164 (0.176)
0.284 (0.186)
0.076 (0.229)
0.443 (0.294)
0
0
0.008 (0.033)
−0.0004 (0.001)
0
0.048 (0.041)
0.033 (0.088)
−0.092 (0.087)
0
(0.037)
(0.047)
(2.879)
(2.687)
0.081 (0.201)
0.210 (0.179)
1.374** (0.473)
0.617* (0.312)
0
0.397***
0.568***
12.30***
−6.818*
−0.816* (0.379)
Model 2
0.924*** (0.115)
Model 1
Continued
−0.958* (0.402)
−0.443 (0.298)
−0.955*** (0.252)
−0.743** (0.279)
0
0.597*** (0.047)
0.376*** (0.038)
10.024*** (2.92)
−6.470* (2.716)
0
0
(0.038)
(0.047)
(2.916)
(2.707)
0.380***
0.610***
6.757*
−7.352**
0
0.054 (0.042)
0.008 (0.088)
−0.093 (0.087)
0
−0.016 (0.033)
−0.001 (0.001)
1.665 (1.025)
Model 4
0
0.376*** (0.038)
0.597*** (0.047)
10.024*** (2.92)
−6.47* (2.716)
0
0.075 (0.042)
0.038 (0.088)
−0.089 (0.087)
0
−0.011 (0.033)
−0.001 (0.001)
0.081 (0.962)
Model 3
Generalized Logistic Multilevel Models Predicting Intolerance
Table 2
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
253
***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05.
National-level
Muslim majority
No
Yes
Economic prosperity
Income inequality
Religious diversity
Cross-level interaction
Nonpracticing Christian × West
Practicing Christian × West
Nonpracticing Muslim × West
Practicing Muslim × West
No religious practice
Random components
Intercepts
Religious practice
Nonpracticing Christian
Practicing Christian
Nonpracticing Muslim
Practicing Muslim
Akaike information criterion
N (individuals)
n (countries)
–
–
–
–
–
1.736*
0.549*
0.584*
0.725*
1.001*
27,232
25,507
23
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
0.066*
0.645*
0.470*
3.723*
1.331*
27,227
25,507
23
Model 2
2.388*** (0.305)
0
–
–
–
–
Model 1
Continued
Table 2
0.016
0.018
0.558*
0.901*
26,902
25,507
23
7.117*
–
–
–
–
–
−0.959 (1.163)
0
0.944*** (0.14)
−3.139*** (0.164)
−0.649 (0.442)
Model 3
1.379***
0.974**
2.608***
1.788***
0.010
0.012
0.003
0.082
26,896
25,507
23
4.874*
(0.416)
(0.318)
(0.454)
(0.511)
0
−2.454 (1.360)
0
0.830*** (0.139)
−3.037*** (0.162)
−0.874 (0.575)
Model 4
254
CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
255
Table 3
Predicted Probabilities for Religious Practices by Broad Cultural
Context (Model 4)
None
Nonpracticing Christian
Practicing Christian
Nonpracticing Muslim
Practicing Muslim
West
Muslim Majority
Difference
.816
.911
.892
.972
.916
.755
.771
.781
.770
.774
.061
.14
.111
.202
.142
the differences in levels of tolerance between Muslims and non-Muslims is
largely due to contextual influences, not religious identities. Nevertheless,
the very slight increase in the AIC value from Model 1 suggests that Model
2 is not the best fitting model.
We now turn to Model 3 that tests whether the impact on tolerance
of living in a Muslim society has anything to do with economic conditions.
This model clearly indicates that even after controlling for economic development and income inequality, Muslim context continues to matter. The
Muslim-West difference, while now much smaller, remains statistically
significant. This finding, and the fact that within-country, individual-level
religious differences have become more variable, suggests the pressing
need for further investigation. It is also important to note that income
inequality has a negative effect, and economic development has a positive
effect. We describe these trends in more detail with respect to the findings
from Model 4.
Model 4 tests the cross-level interaction between religious practice and
religious context. Our goal is to determine if differences between Muslims
and Christians are less pronounced in the West than in Muslim-majority
countries. An analysis of deviance suggests that both the overall interaction effect and the individual terms associated with it are statistically
significant. We also see that the AIC values suggest that including the
interaction improves the fit of the model. Nevertheless, the relationship
between individual-level religion and national context is different from
what we expected in our hypothesis. Rather than differences in attitudes
between the religious groups becoming muted in the West, they are actually
greater than in the Muslim world. In the Muslim world, all religious groups
exhibit relatively similar levels of tolerance.
Table 3 displays predicted probabilities in our two broad cultural contexts for each practicing and nonpracticing religious group, and for those
who identify with no religious group. The predicted probabilities are derived from the coefficients for Model 4. We see that, holding all other vari-
256
CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
ables in the model to their means, all religious groups living in Muslimmajority countries tend to be less tolerant than their counterparts in the
West. Equally important, however, there are greater differences between
the two broad cultural contexts than between religious groups within these
contexts. Especially noteworthy is the high rate of tolerance among Muslims in the West. Consistent with the findings from our previous models,
nonpracticing Muslims have the highest average tolerance of all religious
groups in the West. Surprisingly, the group with the lowest predicted probability of tolerance in the West is the nonreligious. It is also interesting
that, in the West, nonpracticing Christians and Muslims are more tolerant
than their practicing coreligionists are, while in Muslim-majority countries
it is the practicing members of both religions who tend to be most tolerant.
Figure 2 shows the predicted effect for the two statistically significant economic contextual effects. Panel A shows that tolerance tends to
be higher in countries with higher levels of GDP per capita. At low levels
of GDP (less than $10,000 per capita), the predicted probability of tolerance is slightly higher than 0.6. In countries with more than $40,000 GDP
per capita, the predicted probability of tolerance is higher than 0.8. Conversely, panel B shows that the likelihood of tolerance is lower at lower
levels of income inequality. The predicted probability of tolerance is nearly
0.9 in countries with a Gini coefficient below 25. However, the probability
of tolerance is much lower than 0.5 at a Gini coefficient of approximately
43. These findings are consistent with previous findings on the impact
of economic context on tolerance in modern democracies (Andersen and
Fetner 2008).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The idea that it will be difficult for liberal democracy to take root in the
Muslim world typically rests on the premise that Islam is incompatible
with values important to liberal democracy. To test this pessimistic assumption, we assessed the factors associated with one characteristic of
liberal democracy: tolerance toward minorities. Our results suggest that
the relationship between religion and tolerance is more complicated than
that suggested by pessimistic accounts, based as they often are on a simplistic Muslim-West divide.
While, on average, people living in Muslim-majority countries are less
tolerant than are people living in Western countries, Muslims living in
Western societies are generally more likely to hold tolerant beliefs than
Christians in Western societies are. We strongly suspect that self-selection
is at play here. Specifically, we hypothesize that, on average, Muslims who
immigrate to the West are among the most tolerant members of their
countries of origin. We surmise that they find immigration to the West
appealing partly because of their preexisting liberal attitudes. This is a
subject worthy of further investigation. In any event, this finding implies
Predicted 95 Percent Confidence Interval for the Probability of Tolerance According to Per Capita
GDP (Left Panel) and Income Inequality (Right Panel). Estimates are Derived from Final Multilevel
Logit Model (Model 4)
Figure 2
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
257
258
CRS/RCS, 51.3 2014
that religion per se is not responsible for differences in tolerance between
Muslim-majority and Western countries.
Building on this finding, we also discovered that some of the difference in tolerance between people living in Muslim-majority and Western countries can be explained by differences in GDP per capita and income inequality. Still, a significant divide between Muslim-majority and
Western countries persists even after controlling for these two economic
variables. In future research, it would be worthwhile to test whether
the character of political regimes in Muslim-majority countries accounts
for some of the unexplained variance in tolerance (Brym et al. 2004).
It is possible, for example, that France, Great Britain, and the United
States have retarded democratic development in the Middle East and
North Africa by supporting authoritarian leaders and drawing national
boundaries so as to maximize intercommunal conflict and ethnoreligious
intolerance.
Even if such foreign involvement accounts for some of the association
between religion and tolerance, we suspect that religion still exerts a significant influence on tolerance because of its deep institutional foundations
in the Muslim world. In Muslim-majority countries, religion and regime
have interacted at the institutional level for many decades. States have
incorporated religious symbols and functions to legitimize rule and control potential opponents. Typically, state constitutions in Muslim-majority
countries highlight the importance of Islamic principles in governance,
and state-run or state-financed mosques, religious schools, and charitable endowments have proliferated (Wiktorowicz 2000). Social movements
making religious claims are active in such institutions, using them to mobilize resources and recruit followers. Research therefore shows that the
greater the involvement of states in creating religiously infused institutions, the more widespread Islamic activism is (Beck 2009).
At the same time, because state welfare has been unable to meet many
of the basic needs of citizens, and because charity is one of Islam’s five basic
principles, Islamic movements have developed their own medical clinics,
hospitals, professional associations, kindergartens, schools, and universities. They also provide financial aid, emergency relief, literacy classes, and
so on. Government bodies supervise such institutions to varying degrees,
but it is often said that these institutions have become states within states
(Clark 2004; Levitt 2006).
In short, few voluntary associations in the Muslim world are entirely nongovernmental. Few are entirely nonreligious. Most combine
governmental and religious influence. Civil society on the Western model
is difficult to discern. It is possible that electoral democracy will spread
to more Muslim-majority countries. However, because regime and religion
are so tightly intertwined in the provision of health, education, and welfare services, and because (our qualifications notwithstanding) Islam in
Muslim-majority countries is significantly associated with intolerance net
Tolerance in Muslim-Majority and Western Countries
259
of other causes, we expect democracies in such countries to display nonliberal traits for quite some time.
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