From Islamic religiosity to political participation. The role of social exclusion and origin-country ties

The current literature shows rather diffuse results on whether and how religiosity and political participation link among European Muslims. This study argues that this might be due to counteracting mechanisms: social exclusion and origin-country ties. Correspondingly, we test whether and how these two mechanisms mediate the relationship between individual, communal and literalist dimensions of Islamic religiosity with both electoral and non-electoral forms of participation. We use a two-study approach, in which we test hypotheses on two independent Dutch datasets, and apply structural equation modelling. The findings show that overall, being more religious is related to experiencing more social exclusion and greater origin-country ties, and if anything religiosity is on average positively associated with participation. However, we only find marginal support for our expectation that experiencing more social exclusion mobilizes participation, revealing that certain types of exclusion can de-mobilize participation. Although not consistently explaining religiosity's role in political participation, we find origin-country ties to consistently mobilize participation, dispelling fears that ongoing connections with the origin-country are detrimental to Muslims' political participation.