Discrimination is generally understood to be a negative social experience with adverse outcomes for the targeted individual and society, but the political consequences of discrimination have been somewhat overlooked within the social scientific literature. Experiences with discrimination or stigmatization are not typically included in models predicting the probability of political participation, which suggests a scholarly consensus that discrimination is not a dominant driver of participation among the general population. Meanwhile, many scholars who focus on racial and ethnic politics suggest that discrimination leads to feelings of dissatisfaction, which motivates individuals to participate in politics in order to make a political statement or effect change (Barreto and Woods Reference Barreto, Woods, Segura and Bowler2005; Pantoja, Ramirez, and Segura Reference Pantoja, Ramirez and Segura2001; Ramakrishnan Reference Ramakrishnan2005; Stokes Reference Stokes2003; Tate Reference Tate1994; Valenzuela and Michelson Reference Valenzuela and Michelson2016). At the same time, other scholars have suggested that the negative psychological consequences associated with experiencing discrimination, such as feelings of depression and rejection, should result in a lower likelihood of participation (Branscombe, Schmitt, and Harvey Reference Branscombe, Schmitt and Harvey1999; Finch, Kolody, and Vega Reference Finch, Kolody and Vega2000; Oskooii Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020; Schildkraut Reference Schildkraut2005; Whitbeck et al. Reference Whitbeck, McMorris, Hoyt, Stubben and LaFromboise2002). Minoritized groupsFootnote 1 are a growing part of the population in Europe and North America, with estimates predicting that the United States will be “majority-minority” by the middle of the 21th century, for example (Vespa, Medina, and Armstrong Reference Vespa, Medina and Armstrong2018). Given these projections, it is important to seriously consider the role discrimination plays in determining social and political behaviors.
Research suggests that the political effects of discrimination depend on circumstance, the particularities of a group’s experience, and the source of the discrimination. For example, Page’s (Reference Page2018) work on sexuality-based discrimination in East and West Europe suggests that context matters—he finds that those who report sexuality-based discrimination exhibit higher levels of political participation in Western Europe (a context with lower levels of discrimination overall), but lower levels in Eastern Europe. He suggests the difference may be attributable to the greater levels of support from co-group members in Western Europe, which encourages participation. Stokes (Reference Stokes2003) finds that the relationships between group consciousness and political participation among Latinos in the United States vary by subgroup: Whether an individual attributes their group’s failures to institutionalized inequity predicts the participation of Puerto Ricans and Cubans, but not Mexicans. He attributes the difference to the groups’ different socio-political status. In his research on Muslims in the US and UK, Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) argues that the source of discrimination determines its political effect. He theorizes that political discrimination, or acts of discrimination committed by official actors, will be mobilizing because they represent a systemic injustice. Societal discrimination, which occurs between individuals in daily interactions, will trigger feelings of rejection and powerlessness, resulting in demobilization.
There are many forms of discrimination and several potential mechanisms linking discrimination to both political engagement and disengagement. There are also many different ways to engage politically, including more “mainstream” behaviors like voting or contacting a politician, and protest behaviors. What forms of discrimination promote political participation, and do they promote all types of political behaviors?
This article examines the mobilizing power of Islamophobic discrimination. The literature examining the links between discrimination and political behavior has typically focused on singular political activities, such as voting. This work considers a broader range of political behaviors and tests whether discrimination mobilizes Muslims’ mainstream political behaviors and protest activities differently.Footnote 2 It also compares the effects of societal versus political discrimination and individual versus group discrimination.
Most work examining Muslim experiences with discrimination focuses on a single country context. While there are national particularities that justify this approach, Muslims in Europe and North America have faced comparable scrutiny and social consequences following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, and subsequent Islamist attacks in the UK, Spain, France, and elsewhere. They have experienced widespread discriminatory treatment while traveling, in places of business, and in their neighborhoods. This article, therefore, approaches its research question with multinational data from an original survey of Muslims in France, Germany, the UK, Canada, and the US. Analysis of this data demonstrates the degree to which mechanisms linking discrimination to political participation manifest at the individual level, after controlling for country of residence.
Empirically, I demonstrate that among Muslims in five European and North American countries, individual experiences with societal and political discrimination, and perceptions of group discrimination, are associated with greater breadth of mainstream political activities. Meanwhile, experiences with political discrimination, and perceptions of absolute and relative group discrimination, correlate with protest activities. These results demonstrate that Muslims, and especially those who are disadvantaged due to experiences with discrimination, are active democratic citizens who engage in different forms of political participation in response to their social experiences. They also reveal that Muslims discern the specific nature of a discriminatory experience and act accordingly, as suggested by the much stronger associations between systemic (i.e., political and group) discrimination and protest activities.
This article is divided into six sections. First, I define discrimination and describe important variations in the way it manifests. Next, I review literature on Islamophobia, followed by a discussion of scholarship exploring the relationship between experiences with discrimination and the political behavior of Muslims. After formally stating my hypotheses, I describe the data, measurement, methodology, and empirical findings. A discussion section interprets and explains the main findings before concluding with a review of the study’s implications and limitations.
Varieties of Discrimination
Discrimination is a complex social phenomenon involving the unjust treatment of a person based on positive or negative judgments about a perceived categorical difference (Fish and Syed Reference Fish and Syed2020). The perceived difference can be a product of an individual’s skin color, accent, beliefs, background, genealogy, place of residence, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or any other identity marker to which a person ascribes meaning. Discrimination can occur without intent, though it is often the manifestation of prejudice, which is a faulty and inflexible negative attitude or belief about a person, based on their group membership (Allport Reference Allport1954).
Discrimination can be carried out by different actors in a variety of ways, with discriminatory acts ranging from microaggressions to macroaggressions. Microaggressions are everyday intentional or unintentional snubs or insults that communicate bias to the targeted individual (Sue Reference Sue2010). Macroaggressions are less ambiguous acts of discrimination or racism, and could include direct insults, threats, or assault. Compared to macroaggressions, microaggressions may seem inconsequential, though scholars have repeatedly highlighted their importance and impact. Essed (Reference Essed1991; Reference Essed, Theo Goldberg and Solomos2002) presents microaggressions as instances of “everyday racism,” which involves “injustices recurring so often that they are almost taken for granted, nagging, annoying, debilitating, seemingly small, injustices that one comes to expect” (2002, 203). She links individual experiences with everyday racism to the macrostructural hierarchies that support them. The very mundane nature of everyday racism is what makes it consequential—it is difficult to pinpoint, and the practices become normalized, and therefore serve to support attitudes and behaviors that sustain racial injustice. Everyday racism is certainly recognized and felt by the targeted groups—scholarship demonstrates that the cumulative effect of microaggressions can be very negative for the physical and mental health of the targeted individual (Williams Reference Williams2020; Wong et al. Reference Wong, Derthick, David, Saw and Okazaki2014).
Recognizing a discriminatory act requires that the target intercept and interpret messages from the discriminator, a process that involves subjective judgments (C. R. Kaiser and Major Reference Kaiser and Major2006). These judgments can be difficult to make when interpreting subtle microaggressions. Some scholars have suggested that the interpretations may not be related to negative experiences, but may actually reflect the tendency of some individuals (notably, those belonging to ethnic minority groups) to respond disproportionately negatively, or with “hypersensitivity” to mundane events (Lilienfeld Reference Lilienfeld2017). Others have suggested that members of an ethnic minority group may be less sensitive to microaggressions than members of ethnic majorities, because they may not be aware that they are being treated differently, or cognizant of what the differential treatment relates to (Tatum Reference Tatum2017). This suggests that recognizing and understanding microaggressions requires knowledge about the majority culture and relative group status.
Judgments about discrimination may or may not reflect what occurred or what was intended in a particular context. However, the objective reality of whether or not discrimination occurred is somewhat irrelevant, since the perception of discrimination determines negative psychological, physical, or social effects (Oskooii Reference Oskooii2016; Todorova et al. Reference Todorova, Falcón, Lincoln and Price2010). A large body of work, therefore, focuses on subjective assessments of whether, how, and why individuals attribute discriminatory intent. Social scientists have produced evidence of an “integration paradox” whereby immigrants and their descendants who are more incorporated into mainstream society often report experiencing more discrimination (Lajevardi et al. Reference Lajevardi, Oskooii, Walker and Westfall2020; Schaeffer and Kas Reference Schaeffer and Kas2023). They attribute the relationship to greater educational resources, heightened cultural familiarity, and greater risk of downward mobility among more integrated individuals.
Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) argues that individuals perceive discrimination from two distinct sources: society and the system. Societal discrimination involves negative actions against a targeted individual by rank-and-file members of society. It can occur anywhere, but typically occurs in informal public settings. Societal discrimination can take a variety of forms, but often involves some type of character assault, which involves being treated as if one were inferior, unintelligent, dishonest, or dangerous. More aggressive examples might involve name-calling, threats, or even physical assault. By contrast, systematic discrimination, also referred to as political discrimination, refers to discriminatory laws, symbols policies, or practices carried out by public or private institutions. Systemic discrimination is supported by “institutional racism” or “structural racism,” which understands discriminatory outcomes as being attributable to more than individual psychological processes. Rather, institutional racism is rooted in subtle bureaucratic practices that result in unequal outcomes, even in the presence of anti-discrimination policies (Murji Reference Murji2007, Reference Murji2017).
In addition to differentiating between the sources of discrimination, scholars have noted important differences in assessments of individual versus group discrimination. Individual discrimination refers to acts or attitudes directly experienced by an individual, while group discrimination refers to discriminatory acts or attitudes against the group an individual belongs to, which may or may not correspond with individual discrimination. The categories of individual and group discrimination overlap with political and societal discrimination in that individual-level discrimination typically denotes experiences with societal discrimination, while group discrimination implies more systemic, institutional, or political discrimination, though it could also signal a pervasive social climate of discrimination. Taylor et al. (Reference Taylor, Wright, Moghaddam and Lalonde1990) finds that individuals tend to perceive a higher level of discrimination directed against their group as a whole than at themselves as an individual member of the group. Explanations for the personal/group discrimination discrepancy include the possibility that people may be psychologically motivated to deny personal experiences with discrimination (Crosby Reference Crosby1984), that minoritized group members may engage in stereotypes about discrimination against their group (Ruggiero Reference Ruggiero1999), or that information complexity makes it easier to form more abstract group-based judgments (Quinn et al. Reference Quinn, Roese, Pennington and Olson1999).
Perceptions of group and personal discrimination are found to have different effects. Bourguignon et al. (Reference Bourguignon, Seron, Yzerbyt and Herman2006) discovers that while personal discrimination is associated negatively with self-esteem, group discrimination is positively related to self-esteem. They theorize that the positive relationship reflects an understanding that those experiencing discrimination as a collective experience may feel less alone, which compensates for discriminatory exclusion. Similarly, Schmitt et al. (Reference Schmitt, Branscombe, Postmes and Garcia2014) find that the negative psychological effects of group discrimination are weaker than those associated with individual discrimination. These findings suggest that discrimination may ultimately be more harmful to the individual directly experiencing it. That said, belief in group discrimination implies that there is a systemic problem, which offers a pessimistic diagnosis of society. Research has discovered that experiences with group discrimination reinforce boundaries between minoritized groups and mainstream society, and can lead to increased feelings of hostility towards the discriminating group (Holtz, Dahinden, and Wagner Reference Holtz, Dahinden and Wagner2013).
Scholarship on discrimination demonstrates that it is a complex social phenomenon with serious consequences for targeted individuals, groups, and society at large. Understanding the many facets of discrimination is necessary in order to appreciate how individuals relate to discriminatory experiences, and to explain variance in the individual and social consequences of discrimination. These theoretical distinctions apply to the experiences of any group, though each group will have unique experiences related to its particular group identity, history, and socio-political position. Over the past two decades, hostility toward Muslims in the West has accelerated to the point where Muslims are most widely perceived as facing discrimination, compared to other religious and ethnic groups (Alper, Silver, and Mohamed Reference Alper, Silver and Mohamed2024). The prevalence of anti-Muslim discrimination is exacerbated by concerns over the legal and social status of Muslims, since they are persistently linked to terrorism and cultural threat. The prevalence and salience of anti-Muslim discrimination justify focused attention on Islamophobic discrimination and its effects.
Islamophobia
Islamophobia is a shorthand term describing the process of defining Muslims as “other,” and/or any hatred toward Islam, fear and/or dislike of Muslims, and attendant discrimination toward them. It builds on long histories of colonialism and orientalism (Meer Reference Meer2014), and is commonly understood to be a process of racialization that homogenizes and stereotypes Muslims, obscuring the exceptional diversity represented with Muslim populations (Abbas Reference Abbas2007; Allen Reference Allen2010; Cesari Reference Cesari2013; Lajevardi Reference Lajevardi2020). At a psychological level, anti-Muslim antipathy can be rooted in old-fashioned racism, based on a belief in the superiority of one’s own group relative to other groups (Lajevardi and Oskooii Reference Lajevardi and Oskooii2018). Or, it can be the product of specific anti-Muslim stereotypes, like those linking Muslim identity to attributes of foreignness, untrustworthiness, or violence (Hussein Reference Hussein2019; Selod Reference Selod2015; Sides and Gross Reference Sides and Gross2013). Due to its close relationship with the processes of racialization and colonialization, Islamophobia is certainly a form of racism, but complicated by intersectional references to religion.
Many scholars argue that Islamophobia transcends a psychological fear response (a “phobia”), and assert that it functions as an ideology (Allen Reference Allen2010; Sheehi Reference Sheehi2011). As such, it is lodged within collective patterns of thought at the individual, local, communal, national, and global level (Najib and Hopkins Reference Najib and Hopkins2020). Kazi (Reference Kazi2019) demonstrates how Islamophobia, even when it is constructed with reference to nation-specific experiences, is at once national and global, with implications for both domestic and foreign policy. Mansson McGinty (Reference McGinty Mansson2020) identifies these manifestations as “systemic Islamophobia,” which is examined with a focus on domestic and foreign policy (Kazi Reference Kazi2019; Kumar Reference Kumar2012) and the media (Saeed Reference Saeed2007; Shaheen Reference Shaheen2012). Lean (Reference Lean2017) argues that Islamophobia goes beyond simple antipathy or even an institutionalized ideology, and suggests that, at least in the United States and perhaps in Europe, it has become a deliberately manufactured fear or hatred—an “Islamophobia industry”—promoted by political actors for their own personal (and especially monetary) gain.
Islamophobia is not experienced uniformly by all Muslims. It affects individuals differently in different spaces, depending on one’s race, socioeconomic or educational background, immigration status, and the decision to wear physical markers of the faith. Attempts to understand Islamophobia must therefore recognize its experiential complexity. Mansson McGinty (Reference McGinty Mansson2020) emphasizes the importance of theorizing “embodied Islamophobia,” which refers to how Islamophobia “is ultimately lived, experienced and embodied in the context of the everyday in particular spaces and within particular interpersonal relationships” (405).Footnote 3 Her analysis uncovers how global processes are internalized, and the consequential feelings of precarity and alienation. Her work also highlights how embodied Islamophobia is gendered, an issue that is comprehensively unpacked in a volume dedicated to gendered Islamophobia by Easat-Daas and Zempi (Reference Easat-Daas and Zempi2024), who draw attention to gendered Islamophobia as a global phenomenon. Through gendered Islamophobia, Muslim women are marginalized based on dual negative perceptions of their faith and gender, and it results in distinctive forms of gendered violence against Muslim women and others who may “look Muslim”(P. Hopkins Reference Hopkins2016). In the West, the symbol of the hijab has been transformed into a simultaneous symbol of religious difference and an expression of patriarchal oppression. The symbology activates a sense of Western superiority rooted in orientalist stereotypes and a desire to “save” Muslim women (Easat-Daas and Zempi Reference Easat-Daas and Zempi2024; Welborne et al. Reference Welborne, Westfall, Russell and Tobin2018). The literature clearly demonstrates that Islamophobia is a multiscalar phenomenon, simultaneously operating at different levels and through varied mechanisms, intersecting with multiple identities.
Islamophobic Discrimination and Political Behaviors
When it comes to how experiences with Islamophobia influence the political behaviors of Muslims, a small but growing body of research describes what Finlay and Hopkins (Reference Finlay and Hopkins2020, 57) call the “paradoxical impact of Islamophobia”—it can marginalize political actors, but can also mobilize resistance. Drawing on the social psychology literature, some scholars theorize that the psychological trauma associated with experiencing discrimination against oneself or one’s group would naturally trigger defensive withdrawal. Among Muslims in the US, Takyar (Reference Takyar2019) finds that discrimination leads to increased political interest, but the interest does not translate into active political participation, with “Muslims being about 14 percent less likely to engage politically after being exposed to examples of widespread stigma” (p. 246). This reaction could be triggered because of fear, a lack of psychological or physical resources to shield a person from the effects of discrimination, or feelings of powerlessness.
Even as there are numerous reasons for discrimination to trigger withdrawal, research demonstrates that experiences with racism and exclusion motivate the members of minoritized groups to engage in individual and collective activism. Hamdani et al. (Reference Hamdani, Bhatti and Munawar2005, 27) argue that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “forced the [Muslim Canadian] community to the centre of the political stage,” and as a result, the community became more socially and politically active. In the UK, the Rushdie and Honeyford affairs similarly created an awareness among Muslims of the need to engage (Baxter Reference Baxter2006).
For many Muslims, increased political activity is not simply a consequence of increased attention, but a deliberate response to Islamophobia (Cury Reference Cury2019). They recognize that Muslim withdrawal plays right into the hands of Islamophobes, who aim to create a public sphere that Muslims are afraid to enter. The majority of Peucker’s (Reference Peucker2016) interview subjects in Germany and Australia report that stigmatization and discrimination motivate them to become more politically active. Peucker’s (Reference Peucker2021) Australian interviewees describe how their volunteering is driven by a desire to counter anti-Muslim stereotypes and to empower other Muslims to respond to Islamophobia. Relatedly, Finlay and Hopkins (Reference Finlay and Hopkins2019) find that the political participation of Muslim women in Scotland is motivated by a desire to counter gendered stereotypes and to push back against the intersectional discrimination faced by Muslim women. Shanaah (Reference Shanaah2022) finds a curvilinear relationship between experiences with Islamophobia and willingness to engage in counter-extremist activities, where lower levels of Islamophobic experiences increase the likelihood of engagement compared to those who had no experiences and those who experience Islamophobia frequently. Perhaps discrimination is mobilizing until it reaches a point at which it is overwhelming. O’Loughlin and Gillespie (Reference O’Loughlin and Gillespie2012) provide an additional caveat when they argue that the effect may be generational—they find that older generations of Muslims in the UK withdraw in response to Islamophobia, but that younger people are engaging in “dissenting citizenship”. These younger Muslims are committed to democracy and wish to engage politically, but are dissatisfied with the status quo and uncertain about the efficacy of their political behaviors within it, so they look for alternative forms of representation and action.
Several researchers suggest that discrimination indirectly promotes political engagement by increasing Muslim group identification, which motivates advocacy on behalf of their group (Fleischmann, Phalet, and Klein Reference Fleischmann, Phalet and Klein2011; Holtz, Dahinden, and Wagner Reference Holtz, Dahinden and Wagner2013). The mechanism by which group identification promotes action is captured with the concept of group consciousness. Group consciousness goes beyond the concept of group identification and attaches political relevance to the group identity, along with a “willingness to act politically because of [the group identity]” (Calhoun-Brown Reference Calhoun-Brown1996, 936). It comes with an understanding that one’s group is unfairly disadvantaged by mainstream institutions, resulting in feelings of relative deprivation and discontent, which motivates political activity in defense of or on behalf of the group (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Gurin, Gurin and Malanchuk1981).
The paradoxical nature of Islamophobia as both mobilizing and demobilizing is complicated by the different ways discrimination can be experienced and perceived. It is not just that individual Muslims might respond differently to Islamophobia based on their own understandings, but that the same person might respond differently to different types of experiences. As already discussed, Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) theorizes that political discrimination makes politics more salient to members of the targeted group, which motivates individuals to engage in collective action against institutions that are violating their rights. The mobilizing effects can apply to individuals who believe that their group is targeted, even if they have never personally experienced discrimination. Meanwhile, he anticipates that societal discrimination will have a suppressive effect on participation because he expects victims of discrimination to feel rejected and will internalize the negative evaluations communicated by the discriminatory act. This would negatively impact their sense of belonging, which reduces their willingness to engage in politics. He finds that American Muslims who experience societal discrimination are less likely to register or turn out to vote, but they increase their degree of involvement with their in-group, as in-group activities provide a venue of understanding, acceptance, and support, and an opportunity to vent frustrations (Oskooii Reference Oskooii2016). Such a connection has been found among other minoritized communities—Sanchez (Reference Sanchez2006) finds that perceptions of group discrimination among Latino’s promotes engagement around Latino issues, but does not necessarily motivate political activity. Likewise, in a comparison of Muslims in five European cities, Fleischman and Phalet (Reference Fleischmann and Phalet2016a) find Muslims experiencing individual discrimination were more committed to their ethnic and religious identities, but disidentified from their country and city. Meanwhile, Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2016) finds that those American Muslims who identify political discrimination against their group are more likely to register and turn out to vote. In the UK, he finds that societal discrimination suppressed turnout in local and general elections, while political discrimination was positively associated with turnout (Oskooii Reference Oskooii2020).
The empirical relationship between political participation and Islamophobia is further complicated by the multiple ways in which people can participate in politics. Martin (Reference Martin2017) uses the same British data as Oskooii and comes to many of the same results: Perceptions of group-based (sociotropic) Islamophobia heighten feelings of political alienation, and are linked to a lower likelihood of voting, but a greater likelihood of non-electoral political activities commonly associated with protest (participating in a protest, signing a petition, boycotting). Unlike Oskooii, she does not find a significant negative relationship between personal experiences with discrimination and voting, and instead finds an insignificant relationship. Meanwhile, she discovers significant relationships between individual-level (egocentric) discrimination and protest activities. She argues that “These results suggest that Muslims with experiences of egocentric and sociotropic discrimination might see mainstream political institutions and actors as insufficient, leading some to disengage by not voting, but others express this dissatisfaction more directly” (p. 366-367).
While it is most typical for quantitative researchers to explore the determinants of formal political activity, one can also participate in less formal ways. In their interviews with minoritized young people in the UK, O’Toole and Gale (Reference O’Toole and Gale2010) uncovered the patterns on what they call “new grammars of action,” which include highly personalized actions that avoid affiliation with or loyalty to organizations or groups, but cooperate on a case-by-case basis to achieve particular goals. They also identify a “glocal” political orientation, which connects global and local politics through globalized communication and networking, and changes the political priorities of activism in a way that challenges domestic political actors. Likewise, in their study of young Australian Muslims, Harris and Rose (Reference Harris and Roose2014) contend that new forms of “do-it-yourself citizenship” are active amongst Muslim youths. DIY citizenship involves more fluid and unstructured methods of engagement, which are highly personalized based on individual values. For the young Muslims in Harris and Rose’s study, faith and culture inform and motivate the connections and networks they seek to employ in their everyday engagement. For those who have experienced discrimination, mobilization through everyday informal actions allow minoritized groups to express “a gentle resistance to stigmatization” (Carrel Reference Carrel2023, 17). Clearly, understanding the relationship between experiences with discrimination and civic engagement requires scholars to attend to informal methods of engagement in addition to formal participation in order to understand Muslims’ full expression of citizenship.
The empirical relationships between Islamophobia and political engagement are complex, which means that there are continued opportunities to make additional discoveries. This article contributes to the growing body of research by considering a wider range of discriminatory experiences and examining how those experiences relate to mainstream political activities.
Hypotheses
In what follows, I derive hypotheses related to the relationships between the perceptions of discrimination and political participation among Muslims living in Western democratic countries. Experiences with discrimination include societal discrimination, political discrimination, and group discrimination, the latter of which can be evaluated in absolute and relative forms. The assessment of political participation compares mainstream political activities (voting, contacting politicians, attending political meetings, etc.) and protest activities (signing a petition, participating in a protest, or boycotting).
Hypothesis 1: Those who report experiences with societal discrimination will be less likely to engage in mainstream activities and protest activities.
Based on Oskooii’s (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) findings with cross-sectional survey data from the US and the UK, which resemble the cross-sectional multi-country survey data used in the analysis below, I would expect societal discrimination to suppress political participation. He suggests that feelings of rejection and risk of harm would cause those who face social exclusion to avoid challenging the status quo through political activity. That said, Islamophobia functions somewhat paradoxically (Finlay and Hopkins Reference Finlay and Hopkins2020), and there are indications that a hostile environment leads the members of targeted groups to seek affirmation and solidarity (Fleischmann and Phalet Reference Fleischmann and Phalet2016b; Sanchez Reference Sanchez2006). This community-building can lead to the creation of group consciousness, which could mobilize political activity on behalf of the group. I am, therefore, rather ambivalent about hypothesis 1, and will not be surprised if my findings lead me to reject it.
Hypothesis 2: Those who report experiences with political discrimination will be more likely to participate in mainstream and protest activities, but the effect will be stronger for protest activities.
The findings of Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) and Martin (Reference Martin2017) lead me to expect that those who experience political discrimination should be mobilized to engage in collective action against the institutions that are violating their rights. I would expect the effect of political discrimination to be stronger for protest activities, given the systemic injustice represented by political discrimination.
Hypothesis 3: Those who perceive greater levels of discrimination against Muslims as a group will be more likely to participate in mainstream and protest activities, but the effect will be stronger for protest activities.
Perceptions of targeted group discrimination communicate awareness of group disadvantage, which is a central component of group consciousness. Group consciousness has been linked to electoral and non-electoral political participation among socially subordinate groups (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Gurin, Gurin and Malanchuk1981). For these groups, the social conditions they experience are politicized through group consciousness and related assessments of social justice, which motivate collective action. The members of subordinate groups can be mobilized to work for change within the system through mainstream political activities such as voting, contacting representatives, or donating funds to a political cause. In addition, because group consciousness implies recognition of the systemic mistreatment of one’s group, I would expect it to motivate protest activities for reasons similar to those provided in support of hypothesis 2.
Hypothesis 4: Those who believe that Muslims are discriminated against relative to other religious groups within their country of residence will be more likely to engage in protest activities.
A key element of group consciousness is the identification of relative deprivation (Davis Reference Davis1959). Perceptions of group discrimination communicate unfair disadvantage relative to mainstream society in general. However, unfavorable comparisons with analogous identity groups can highlight particularly offensive hypocrisy or an unfair double standard. I, therefore, expect that those who perceive greater discrimination against Muslims than against Christians or Jews will be more mobilized to protest.
Data and Measurement
I examine the relationship between reported discrimination and civic engagement with data from the Trans-Atlantic Muslim Opinion Survey (TAMOS), an original online survey of self-identified Muslims in Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US. A comprehensive description of why these countries were selected is outlined elsewhere (Westfall Reference Westfall2024), but a summary of the rationale most relevant for an exploration of the political effects of discrimination is as follows. First, these countries have significantly different histories of Muslim migration. As former colonizers, the UK and France have well-established Muslim populations with roots in their former colonies. These colonial relationships establish a legacy of systemic inequality and structural discrimination. Germany does not have a Muslim post-colonial population, but their guest worker system led to large flows of Muslim immigrants whose descendants have struggled to attain political, social, and economic equality. In addition, modern Muslim migration to Europe has been dominated by asylum and irregular flows, which tend to provoke a social backlash. In contrast, Muslim migrants to North America typically migrate through legal processes, are socioeconomically better positioned to integrate into their host state, and comprise a smaller proportion of the total population.
In addition, these countries demonstrate substantial variance in the formal recognition of minoritized groups. Policies of multiculturalism recognize the benefits of allowing migrant and minoritized communities to retain their cultural heritage and act as interest groups for their people, while the policies of assimilation exclude religion from the public sphere or restrict the practice of minority religions. Canada is the most explicitly multicultural state with a clear federal policy, followed by the UK, which does not have a central law promoting multiculturalism, but the political culture reflects multicultural values. Germany engages in “multiculturalism as pragmatism,” (Eckardt Reference Eckardt2007), through providing practical, targeted support to Muslim communities. The hands-off approach of the US looks more like “assimilation as pragmatism.” France’s republican model emphasizes cultural assimilation and the exclusion of religion from the public sphere through the policies of secularism. Trittler (Reference Trittler2019) discovered that more secular understandings of national identity correlate with an increased likelihood that Muslims living in Western European nations would perceive discrimination. These key differences in migration histories and group recognition should influence experiences with and perceptions of discrimination within each of these states, which should introduce state-level variation in the data. If the hypothesized relationships manifest after the inclusion of state-level fixed effects, we can be confident that the relationship exists at the individual level across varied contexts.
I designed the TAMOS survey to collect comprehensive data on Muslims’ self-reported discriminatory experiences and civic engagement. The survey data were collected with an online questionnaire distributed in August 2019 by Qualtrics® (https://www.qualtrics.com/), which employs a full probability design with web-based survey technology. Qualtrics works with sample partners in each country, who drew samples from double-opt-in market panels where possible. Since Muslims are hard to reach, some participants were actively recruited based on their religious identity from the partner databases. Surveys were available in English, French, Canadian French, and German. Because of the targeted sampling, the online distribution, and the limited options for languages, the resulting sample is unlikely to be statistically representative of the Muslim population in each country, and the results from this data should not be generalized.Footnote 4 That said, a sizeable multinational sample from a targeted population of interest has the potential to deliver important insights. The sample includes responses from 2341 Muslims: 300 Muslims in Canada, 522 Muslims in France, 504 Muslims in Germany, 511 Muslims in the UK, and 504 Muslims in the US.
Dependent Variables: Political Participation
My dependent variables measure mainstream political participation and political protest. I measure the breadth of political participation by asking whether the respondent participated in several political behaviors within the previous 12 months. Mainstream political activities are those activities that are generally held to support the status quo institutional democratic politics. These include contacting a politician, donating money to a political organization or candidate, voting in an election, volunteering for a political party or action group, volunteering for another political organization, wearing a political badge or sticker, and/or attending a meeting or rally. Protest activities include signing a petition, participating in a lawful public demonstration, and boycotting a product.Footnote 5 Differentiating between mainstream and protest activities is not meant to suggest that mainstream activities cannot be used to express dissent. It is only meant to distinguish those protest activities that are unambiguously oppositional from those that are more ambiguous, in order to determine whether discrimination is more or less associated with protest. Factor analysis affirms the construction of two variables capturing different types of political participation (see Appendix A), and two additive indices were constructed from these indicators.Footnote 6
Independent Variables: Discrimination
Individual experiences with discrimination. Experiences with discrimination are measured with the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS), created by Williams and colleagues (Reference Williams, Yu, Jackson and Anderson1997) to study racial differences in physical and mental health. The original scale included nine questions asking about the frequency of the following experiences: (1) being treated with less courtesy, (2) being treated with less respect, (3) receiving poor service, (4) people acting like you aren’t smart, (5) people acting as if they are afraid of you, (6) people acting as if you are dishonest, (7) people acting as if they are better than you, (8) you are called names or insulted, and (9) you are threatened or harassed. The EDS is embedded in TAMOS; however, TAMOS modifies the scale with the inclusion of a question about physical assault. TAMOS also adds whether the experiences were “because you are a Muslim” to all questions. All indicators of experiences with discrimination are highly correlated (α = 0.92). Definitions and summary statistics for all of the variables included in the model are provided in Appendix B.
The rates of discrimination reported in TAMOS exceed those in other research. In the 2017 Pew survey of American Muslims, only 6% reported physical threats or assault within the last year, compared to 30% in the TAMOS sample reporting to have had such experiences within the prior month (Pew Research Center 2017). Thirty-two percent of Pew’s sample reports being treated with suspicion within the last year, compared to 41% in the present sample reporting to have had such experiences within the last month. The differences are likely partly attributable to survey technique, since Pew surveyed by telephone, and TAMOS is an online survey that employed a blocked question structure for questions about discrimination. Respondents indicated the frequency with which they experience the discriminatory behavior (never, infrequently, at least once a month, at least once a week, and almost every day). This structure makes it easy for a respondent to indiscriminately click down a column. Because of potential overreporting, I measure experiences with discrimination conservatively, with dichotomous indicators of whether a respondent experienced at least one act of discrimination at least monthly. Sixty-three percent of the sample reports experiencing discrimination within the preceding month.
Political discrimination. Political discrimination involves differential treatment by representatives of the government or law enforcement. TAMOS measures political discrimination with five dichotomous indicators capturing whether they report ever experiencing the following forms of discrimination “because they are a Muslim”: being selected for extra security at the airport, being questioned at a border crossing, being stopped or questioned by police, being asked by a public official to leave a public space, and being denied a public service. An index was created from these indicators. Eighty-two percent of respondents report at least one of these experiences.Footnote 7
Group discrimination. Group discrimination is measured with an ordinal variable capturing whether the respondent believes Muslims face none, a little, some, or a lot of discrimination within their country of residence. Forty-eight percent of respondents report that Muslims face a lot of discrimination.
Relative discrimination. In addition to assessing discrimination toward Muslims, TAMOS asks to what extent the respondent believes a number of other groups face discrimination, including two other religious groups: Jews and Christians. To capture the extent to which the respondents believe Muslims experience discrimination relative to other groups, I subtract the responses to the questions about Jews and Christians from the responses about Muslims. Scores of zero represent no differences in discrimination, positive scores indicate more discrimination against Muslims, and negative scores indicate higher perceptions of discrimination against Christians/Jews. Seventy percent of respondents indicated higher levels of discrimination against Muslims compared to Christians, and 49% reported higher levels of discrimination against Muslims compared to Jews. Appendix C provides the pairwise correlation coefficients between all of the discrimination indicators.
Competing Explanations
Competing explanations for Muslim civic engagement are accounted for in the model with variables capturing mosque attendance, active organizational memberships, political ideological placement, interest in politics, generalized trust, trust in the government, and demographic characteristics. Mosque attendance is measured with an ordinal variable capturing the frequency of attendance for social or religious activities other than prayer. Mosque attendance is included in the model because it is consistently found to be a significant predictor of political participation in varied national contexts (Dana, Barreto, and Oskooii Reference Dana, Barreto and Oskooii2011; Fleischmann, Martinovic, and Böhm Reference Fleischmann, Martinovic and Böhm2016; Jamal Reference Jamal2005; Westfall Reference Westfall2019, Reference Westfall2024). Relatedly, associational life is a consistent predictor of political participation of Muslims and non-Muslims alike (Fleischmann, Martinovic, and Böhm Reference Fleischmann, Martinovic and Böhm2016; Giugni, Michel, and Gianni Reference Giugni, Michel and Gianni2014; Westfall Reference Westfall2025). Active organizational memberships are measured with an index of active memberships in 11 types of organizations (Sport or recreational organization; art, music, or educational organization; labor union; political party; environmental organization; professional organization; humanitarian or charitable organization; consumer organization; self-help or mutual aid group; ethnic or cultural organization; other organization). I control for ideological placement based on the assumption that ideological placement on the right suggests conservatism regarding the status quo, which might suppress reformative political activity. Those who are more interested in or informed about politics are assumed to have a higher probability of participating in both mainstream and protest activities. Interest in politics is measured with an ordinal indicator of how much time a respondent spends engaging with the news or political material. Generalized trust is captured with a dichotomous variable asking whether the respondent believes that either most people can be trusted (1), or that one cannot be too careful around other people (0). Those who exhibit higher levels of trust might feel themselves to be part of society, and therefore would be more likely to engage in mainstream activities. I also include an indicator of whether respondents trust their government a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all. Those who trust the government should be more likely to participate in politics, but less likely to protest. Unemployment, gender, immigrant background, citizenship, and ethnicity are all included in the model as dichotomous control variables, along with ordinal measures of education and age, and dichotomous indicators of respondent country of residence. France is excluded as the category of reference, because French respondents exhibit the lowest level of mainstream political participation on average and the highest level of protest activities on average in the data (see Appendix B).
Results
Because the dependent variables capturing the breadth of political activities are ordinal, it is appropriate to fit generalized linear models (ordered probit models). The full models are available in Appendix D and E. Figure 1 illustrates the predicted probabilities that an individual will engage in at least one activity for all of the significant variables in the models predicting mainstream and protest activities—the effects on protest are striped.Footnote 8 The effects of the discrimination indicators are shaded for visibility.
Changes in predicted probability (min-max) of engaging in at least one political activity probability of engaging in mainstream activity when all variables are at means = 79%. probability of engaging in protest when all variables are at means = 54%.
The results reveal that the significant indicators of discrimination positively predict engaging in mainstream political activity. Personal experience with societal discrimination increases the probability of engaging in a mainstream political activity by 8.5%, but does not significantly predict protest activity. Neither of these results support hypothesis 1.
Experiences with political discrimination share the strongest relationships with mainstream and protest activities of all of the discrimination indicators. Experiences with political discrimination increase the probability of engaging in at least one mainstream activity by 19.3%. Meanwhile, experience with political discrimination is the strongest predictor of protest of all of the variables in the model, increasing the probability of a protest activity by 40.6%. Both of these relationships confirm hypothesis 2.
Perceptions of group discrimination are positively associated with both mainstream activities and protest, increasing the probability of engaging in at least one activity by 5.2% and 11.9%, respectively, confirming hypothesis 3. Perceptions of group discrimination relative to other faith groups significantly predict protest, as anticipated in hypothesis 5. However, only the comparison of Muslims to Christians has a predictive effect, increasing the probability of engaging in at least one protest activity by roughly 23.6%.
Many indicators capturing competing explanations significantly predict mainstream political activities in the expected directions, and some of the effects are stronger than those associated with discrimination. Mosque attendance increases the probability of a mainstream activity by 9.5%. The number of active organizational memberships is the most powerful predictor in the model predicting mainstream activities. Those who have the most types of active organizational memberships are about 24% more likely to participate than those with no memberships. Generalized trust weakly supports participation, but trust in the government shares a strong positive relationship, increasing the probability of engaging in a mainstream activity by 14%. Time spent on the news and education has a strong positive effect, increasing the probability of participation by 14% and 19%, respectively. The unemployed and first-generation migrants are less likely to participate in mainstream activities, while citizens are 11% more likely to participate than non-citizens. Once controlling for the other potential explanations for mainstream activities, residents of Canada, Germany, and the UK are more likely than residents in France to participate in mainstream political activities, while residents in the US are statistically indistinguishable from those in France.
Most of the same indicators are significant in the models predicting mainstream and protest activities, but there are a few important differences. Mosque attendance negatively predicts protest, while active organizational memberships maintain a positive, but weaker (12%) effect on the probability of engaging in protest activities, compared to mainstream activities. Trust in the government flips direction and negatively predicts protest activity. Those who have a lot of trust in the government are 22% less likely to participate in any protest activity, compared to those who do not trust the government. Those who spend a lot of time reading or watching the news are 15% more likely to protest compared to those who do not engage with the news, and education again shares a positive relationship with protest. Ideology, which was not a significant predictor of mainstream participation, is a very significant predictor of protest. Those who position themselves on the far right of the ideological scale are 30% less likely to engage in protest than those who place themselves on the far left. Those who identify as female are more likely to protest, while older generations are not. Though first-generation immigrants were less likely to participate in mainstream politics, they are more likely to engage in protest. Finally, the residents of Canada, Germany, and the UK are less likely to engage in protest activities, compared to residents of France.
Discussion
The models reveal that discrimination in all of its forms is generally mobilizing among participants in the survey, but discriminatory experiences and perceptions mobilize mainstream political activities and protest activities differently. Individual experiences with discrimination mobilize mainstream political participation. This finding affirms the work of Peucker (Reference Peucker2016, Reference Peucker2021) and Finlay and Hopkins (Reference Finlay and Hopkins2019), who suggest that experiences with discrimination motivate activities to subvert stereotypes and assert their rights. However, these results conflict with those of Oskooii (Reference Oskooii2020), who found that experiences with societal discrimination shared a negative relationship with indicators of mainstream participation. His negative results could be the product of how he measures his dependent variables with multiple dichotomous indicators capturing a single political behavior (voting, participating in a protest, attending a community meeting, contacting a representative), while I employ an index to capture the breadth of participation in a wider array of political activities. When I run probit models with dichotomous indicators of the individual political practices as the dependent variable (see Appendix F), the societal discrimination variables lose significance roughly half of the time, but none of the relationships are negative.Footnote 9 Another explanation for our divergent results could be that we cannot determine what motivates the political activity, and it could be that activities motivated by group consciousness are better captured with a wider range of political activities. Alternatively, our different results could come down to sample—his are national, while mine is multinational. Though there are reasonable explanations for the differences in our results, they call for more research on how experiences with societal discrimination relate to political behaviors, and how the relationship may vary by context.
My results suggest that experiences with societal discrimination mobilize mainstream political behaviors, but they lose significance in the models predicting protest activities. These results conflict with Martin’s (Reference Martin2017) findings in the UK, where individual discrimination mobilized protest, but they somewhat align with Oskooii’s (Reference Oskooii2016) findings in the US. When theorizing about the negative relationships he expected to discover between discrimination and participation, he thought that individuals who experience discrimination may “avoid challenging their deprived position in society” due to feelings of rejection or fear of harm (620). This insight could help explain why the relationships lose significance for political protest in my models—those who feel vulnerable may hesitate to rock the boat through confrontational activity. In addition, it could be the case that those who experience societal discrimination do not see the connection between the behaviors of a few bad actors and the behavior of state or elected officials, making the use of protest in response to societal discrimination seem inappropriate. Perhaps the conflict with Martin’s findings can be explained by differences in data and my multinational sample.
Political discrimination is a very powerful predictor of participation in both models, but it is twice as powerful when it comes to predicting protest. These findings confirm Oskooii’s (Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020) theory, which suggested that discrimination from official sources is mobilizing. Those who experience political discrimination identify political activity as an appropriate way to respond to discrimination from state actors. The extra-strong relationship with protest suggests that the respondents recognize not only the source of their discrimination, but also the injustice of it, and therefore target it with activities that are intended to express dissatisfaction and demand a correction.
Group discrimination positively predicts both mainstream and protest activity. It is not as powerful as personal experiences with discrimination in mobilizing mainstream activities, which pushes back against my assumption that respondents would identify group discrimination as a systemic social issue demanding a strong political response. However, group discrimination is twice as powerful as personal experiences with discrimination when it comes to predicting protest activities, which could indicate a link between perceptions of group discrimination and group consciousness, which mobilizes protest activities on behalf of or in defense of the group. This finding corresponds with research suggesting that group discrimination may reinforce social boundaries and augment feelings of oppression among the minoritized group (Holtz, Dahinden, and Wagner Reference Holtz, Dahinden and Wagner2013).
As anticipated, relative discrimination only predicts protest, and only the comparison with Christians was a significant and powerful predictor of protest activities. The comparison with Jews did not register as significant in any of the models. This could be due to how stark the comparison between Muslim and Christian discrimination is: Eighty-seven percent of respondents believe Muslims face discrimination (48% believe they face “a lot” of discrimination), while sixty percent of the sample does not believe Christians face any discrimination at all. These frequencies reflect perceptions that Christianity is the mainstream religion in each of the countries in the sample, and therefore possesses societal, if not official, positions of privilege. Those who recognize the strong contrast between the privilege of Christians and the disadvantage of Muslims are more likely to be active in protest activities. This result, along with the stronger relationship between perceptions of group discrimination and protest, suggests that Muslim group consciousness is activating protest more than mainstream political activities among participants in this multinational survey.
None of the indicators of alternative explanations yield unanticipated results, but a few are worth noting. Mosque attendance, which is positively associated with mainstream political engagement, is negatively associated with protest. Religious associational participation, including mosque attendance, activates mechanisms that encourage participation (Dana, Wilcox-Archuleta, and Barreto Reference Dana, Wilcox-Archuleta and Barreto2017; McAndrew and Voas Reference McAndrew and Voas2014; Peucker Reference Peucker2018; Westfall Reference Westfall2019), and mosque leaders strongly encourage their congregants to be involved in politics (Bagby Reference Bagby2012; Booth and Mohammed Reference Booth and Mohammed2024), which could explain the positive association with mainstream activities. The negative relationship with protest could be explained by the idea that those Muslims who attend mosque may feel a greater attachment to their religious identity. This could increase feelings of vulnerability, which may lead them to avoid challenging the status quo through protest activity. The negative relationship between ideological conservatism and protest (but not mainstream activities) confirms previous findings of ideological asymmetry in support for protest (Barker, Nalder, and Newham Reference Barker, Nalder and Newham2021), and demonstrates that the pattern persists amongst Muslims in this sample. Women in the sample are more likely than men to report protest activities. This could relate to the unique socio-political position of Muslim women and their experiences with gendered Islamophobia. In addition, in the post-September 11 context, in which Muslim men are stereotyped as being violence-prone and threatening (Dwyer, Shah, and Sanghera Reference Dwyer, Shah and Sanghera2008; P. E. Hopkins Reference Hopkins2004), Muslim women may strategically be better positioned to protest than Muslim men. First-generation immigrants are less likely to participate in mainstream political activities than those who are not first-generation immigrants, but more likely to protest. This finding could reflect the weaker political integration of first-generation immigrants in the formal politics of the host state, compared to those who were born there.
The significance of the country controls suggests that there is some interesting national variance represented in the data. France was excluded from the analysis as the country of comparison because the reported political participation in France fell at the extremes in both mainstream political activities (the lowest average score) and protest (the highest average score). When it comes to mainstream political activities, residents in Canada, the UK, and Germany are more likely to participate than respondents in France (in order of the strongest to the weakest relationships). This ordering reflects the degree of multiculturalism endorsed within these states, where Canada is explicitly multicultural, the UK is multicultural in practice, and Germany is quasi-multicultural. By comparison, France is assimilationist, and the US is quasi-assimilationist. These findings suggest that more multicultural states have more politically active Muslim populations. When it comes to protest, Muslims in the US and Germany (Canada was only significant in the model, including positive discrimination, and insignificant in all of the others) are less likely to engage. This may reflect the reality that multicultural countries, like Canada and the UK, are more tolerant of minority group protests. And in France, which has a strong protest culture, and where the secular assimilationist policies regularly conflict with Muslim expressions of religiosity, Muslims may be highly motivated to protest. These findings suggest that additional analysis of comparative data alongside focused single-case studies will help us better understand national-level variance. That said, a primary contribution of this article is the analysis of multinational data that reveal similar dynamics linking discrimination to political behaviors at work in different national contexts, even after controlling for national-level differences.
Conclusion
These findings support the theory that experiences with discrimination are mobilizing for the members of minoritized groups, and demonstrate the persistence of this effect among Muslims living in Europe and North America. I compare political and societal discrimination, but also individual and group discrimination, and find that these forms of discrimination are associated with different political behaviors. The literature examining the links between discrimination and political behavior has typically focused on a limited number of political activities, and most commonly electoral behaviors (Martin Reference Martin2017; Oskooii Reference Oskooii2016, Reference Oskooii2020; Takyar Reference Takyar2019). This article makes a contribution by considering a broader range of political behaviors and, like Martin (Reference Martin2017), tests whether discrimination mobilizes mainstream political behaviors and protest activities differently. These results suggest that Muslims, and especially those who are disadvantaged due to experiences with societal and political discrimination, are active democratic citizens who engage in different forms of political participation as a response to their social experiences. They also imply that Muslims discern the specific nature of a discriminatory experience and act accordingly, as suggested by the much stronger associations between systemic (i.e., political and group) discrimination and protest activities.
The theorized mechanisms behind the positive relationship between discrimination and political participation assume that the political activity is a reaction to discrimination in order to make a statement or effect change. Both mainstream and protest activities can fulfill these objectives, but the corrective nature of political behavior is most apparent in the strong relationships between perceptions of systemic discrimination and protest. Some might interpret heightened Muslim protest activities as a problematic outcome, indicating failures in the system or signaling Muslim discontent. In a worst case scenario, these problems could lead to Muslim withdrawal from more mainstream activities, a tradeoff suggested by O’Loughlin and Gillespie (Reference O’Loughlin and Gillespie2012). That experiences with political and group discrimination are also positively (though more weakly) linked to mainstream activity pushes back against this notion. Furthermore, nonviolent protest has been central to the introduction of most of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by residents of democratic countries, especially for members of minoritized groups. They provide a check on the power of the state and provide a mechanism, alongside mainstream political participation, by which the members of the community can provide important informational cues to voters and politicians, make issues salient, and place issues on the public agenda. Protests are a critical feature of representative democracy. By demonstrating how the varied experiences with discrimination mobilize mainstream participation and protest, these results highlight how Muslim responses to discrimination support multiple pillars of democracy.Footnote 10
This study is not without its limitations. First, because of the way the samples were collected (targeted, not random sampling), the data are not representative. This is a common weakness in research targeting Muslims. The online data collection also introduces challenges, as do self-reported perceptions of discrimination. I have already mentioned the potential for overreporting rates of discrimination due to the format and delivery of the survey. These are also indications of demographic bias in the data. Though the Muslim populations in these countries tend to be younger on average than the general population, younger people are overrepresented in this survey sample (65% are 35 or younger). The age bias in the TAMOS data is most likely the result of online survey distribution using the languages of the host state, and it probably feeds into other disproportionalities, such as the high proportion of citizens represented in the sample. The presence of age bias does not invalidate the results of this research (age variation is controlled for in the statistical models), but it does emphasize challenges with generalizing the results.
While TAMOS’s cross-national data contributes to the study of Muslims in Muslim-minority contexts, the survey was conducted in 2019. Our social and political realities have been transformed in a number of ways since then. The Black Lives Matter movement energized minoritized communities around the world and provided more opportunities for identity-centered protest. In addition, Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of the Gaza Strip has altered Muslim political allegiances. For some Muslims, the actions in Gaza may lead them to disengage from participating in a government that they see as complicit in the slaughter of Muslims abroad. Meanwhile, the same events mobilize protest activities. Surveys of Muslims must be prioritized to enable important comparisons over time, and a more accurate understanding of key challenges and opportunities involved in engaging with Muslim populations.
Finally, many of the potential mechanisms described in the discussion section are speculative due to the limitations of working with correlational data. Empirical quantitative analysis helps us identify associations between discrimination and political participation, but we cannot use these results here to attribute causation. Quantitative analysis cannot reflect the complex and intersectional ways Islamophobia is experienced, nor how very similar experiences can trigger very different reactions in individuals. Qualitative research has been more helpful in this regard, demonstrating the ways in which Islamophobia is embodied (Mansson McGinty Reference McGinty Mansson2020), gendered (P. Hopkins Reference Hopkins2016; Mirza Reference Mirza, Gross, Davies and Diab2013), racialized (Garner and Selod Reference Garner and Selod2015; Moosavi Reference Moosavi2015), and psychologically experienced (Rehman and Hanley Reference Rehman and Hanley2023). While this article provides statistical associations suggesting that societal, political, and group discrimination may mobilize political behavior differently, further qualitative work is necessary to understand the mechanisms at work behind the statistical relationships.
Though this research has limitations, it makes an important contribution to our knowledge about the links between the varieties of discrimination and political participation. The expanded consideration of different forms of discrimination and political activities raises new possibilities that can be taken up in future research. Recognizing that discrimination is mobilizing Muslim political activity speaks to the political interests of this minoritized group, revealing the importance of anti-discrimination efforts as a way to help Muslim populations feel seen and heard as democratic citizens within the societies they inhabit.
Supplementary material
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2025.10040.
Acknowledgements
Research for this paper was supported by the Write Now, Right Now program and the Office of the Provost at Wheaton College. I am indebted to my Everett Misto and Cailey Samuels (Wheaton Class of 2024) for their collaboration in early research into Islamophobic discrimination, research that eventually led to this article. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, whose helpful comments improved this article tremendously.
