The colonial origins of secularization: historical pathways of economic elites and religiosity in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract What is the impact of income on secularity? Why does higher income lead to greater secularity in some contexts but not others? I argue that the answer lies in the long-term political consequences of direct colonial rule. Challenging conventional wisdom on secularization, I advance a macro-historical account in which colonial intervention reshaped the social meaning of secularity among higher-income groups. In societies subjected to direct colonial rule, secularity became associated with foreign imposition and elite collaboration, generating postcolonial resistance among the affluent. Consequently, higher income does not predict greater individual secularity in these contexts. By contrast, in societies never directly colonized, economic elites historically spearheaded modernization projects that incorporated secularization, producing a positive income–secularity association. I test this argument using 351,960 observations from 269 countries over three decades (1989–2022) in the World Values Survey, alongside additional evidence from the Carnegie Middle East Governance and Islam Dataset.