Secularization in the Muslim World: Relationship Between Government Performance and Religiosity

Why Are There More Atheists in the Muslim World? For many years, Muslim countries were outside the secularization trend experienced in different parts of the world. This situation seems to have changed in recent years. Surveys in many Muslim countries show that Muslim societies are rapidly moving away from religion, trust in religious leaders and Islamist parties is declining, and fewer people want religion to have an impact on politics. Yet, it seems that none of the explanations provided by secularization literature, such as revised modernization theory or religious markets theory, can help us adequately understand the decline in religiosity in Muslim countries. I claim that there could be a relationship between people's well-being and religiosity and argue that governments' declining economic performance can explain the recent developments taking place in Muslim countries. Various authors have already shown that politics can influence religion just as religion and religiosity influence politics. With this study, I tried to provide details about conditions under which politics can affect religion and religiosity in Muslim countries. Considering that religion affects every part of Muslims' lives, results from this study may give us an idea about the future of politics in the Muslim world.