Understanding the Religiosity-Political Participation Linkage among Muslim Women

Culturalism or Social Capital?

Abstract

In understanding Muslim women’s political participation across Western European countries, Islam and its supposed linkage to patriarchy have been problematised in culturalist arguments. Contrarily, political science and migration studies consider religiosity as social capital and, thus, a mobilising force. This tension may help explain why results on religiosity and political empowerment are mixed and help understand Muslim women’s political participation, giving the women at this intersection specific attention. Gender equality views, political interest, trust and collective action strategies are culturalist and social capital factors considered as linking different aspects of Islamic religiosity to institutional and non-institutional participation. We do so by taking a multi-study approach, analysing two different samples of Muslim women in the Netherlands. Results show that Islamic religiosity mostly fosters Muslim women’s political participation but that it also reduces non-institutional participation, whereby the results for trust, political interest and activity in civic organisations support the social capital explanation more than the culturalist one.