Challenging the Muslimification of Muslims in research on ‘liberal democratic values’: why culture matters beyond religion

Abstract

This study critiques the use of ‘Muslim’ as an analytic category and overfocus on religiosity as an explanatory variable in studies on conflicts between Muslims and national majorities over ‘liberal democratic values’. We call this tendency the Muslimification of Muslims. We demonstrate how this research reproduces and reinforces stereotypes drawn from dominant resonant public debates. To challenge these assumptions, we turn the research inquiry around so that ‘Muslim’ and religiosity become objects not tools for analysis. Revisiting the EurIslam survey data-set, explicitly designed for studying socio-cultural distances between Muslims and majorities, we examine boundary construction over ‘liberal democratic values’. For Muslims, first, we test for differences between four ethnonational family origin groups – Ex-Yugoslavians, Moroccans, Turks, Pakistanis- and second, for the explanatory power of religiosity compared to non-religious cultural variables. Findings are clear-cut: family ethnonational origin matters and there are different group trajectories of acculturation; religiosity has a very modest impact and much less than self-identification with settlement-country which pushes in the opposite acculturative direction. Simply put, regarding the construction of differences over ‘liberal democratic values’, not all Muslims are the same, and it is not all about practicing Islam. It is time for a re-think and a de-Muslimification of academic research.