Religion, Religiosity and the Place of Islam in Political Life:

Insights from Cross-National and Longitudinal Survey Research in the Arab World

Mark Tessler

University of Michigan

Research Questions

Democratic currents have swept across much of the developing and post-communist

world during the last quarter century. The Arab world has been largely unaffected by this

revolution, however. The Arab Human Development Report, published annually by the United

Nations since 2002, has consistently lamented that political systems “have not been opened up to

all citizens” and that “political participation is less advanced in the Arab world than in other

developing regions.” Confirming this judgment are the most recent Freedom House indicators,

which report that not a single Arab country is fully free and only six are even partly free.

Large numbers of ordinary citizens in the Arab world are discontent with this situation

and are asking how their societies should be governed. Public opinion research indicates that

vast majorities want their countries to be governed by a political system that is democratic; but

while there is broad support for democracy, there is a deep division of opinion about the extent to

which, and the way in which, Islam should play a role in political affairs. The relationship

between Islam and politics is arguably the most important and hotly-debated issue pertaining to

governance in the present-day Arab world. The table below, based on face-to-face interviews

conducted in 2006-2007 with 8122 randomly selected men and women in seven Arab countries,

illustrates the distribution of political system preferences that exists in all of the Arab countries

for which data are available. It reflects broad support for democracy but, equally important, a
clear difference of opinion about whether there should be a separation of Islam and political

affairs.

Separation of Islam and Politics

Strong Agree/Agree Disagree/Strong Disagree
Support Very Strong/ 41.3% 44.5%
Strong (secular democracy) (democracy with religion)
For
7.8% 6.4%
Democracy Not Strong (secular non-democracy) (non-democratic religious system

The division of opinion about the relationship between Islam and politics raises three

important sets of questions, which are the focus of the research I propose to undertake:

First, what political values and conceptions are held by citizens who favor secularism and by

citizens who favor a political formula that is not only democratic but is also Islamic in some

meaningful way? In other words, what kind of “political culture” characterizes the men and

women in each category, and in what respects, if any, are their normative political orientations

similar or different. Political culture in this connection includes normative and behavioral

orientations related to tolerance and respect for diversity; political interest, knowledge and trust;

and civic engagement and social capital.

Second, what factors explain why different individuals come to different conclusions about

the way their country should be governed, and about the place of Islam in political affairs in

particular? On the one hand, what individual-level circumstances and experiences lead to

particular views about the political role that Islam should play? Among the factors whose

explanatory power will be assessed are religiosity and differing tendencies in religious

interpretation. On the other hand, what societal-level circumstances and experiences condition

the broader environment within which views about Islam and politics are formed? These latter

questions indicate the importance of moving beyond static description; they call attention to the

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need for an investigation of the dynamic interaction between individual-level and society-level

factors shaping political attitudes and values.

Third, to what extent do distributions and variable relationships vary over time? This

question not only concerns assessments of the stability of observed patterns; it also has analytical

implications. Similarities over time suggest that important intervening events do not have

significant explanatory power. Alternatively, temporal differences permit the development of

testable insights about what kinds of events contribute to change over time.

Data and Method

Until recently, the systematic study of political attitudes and values was the missing

dimension in political science research in the Arab world. In the last seven years, however, I and

several co-investigators have carried out seventeen representative national surveys in eight Arab

countries. These countries are Morocco, Algeria, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Iraq,

Lebanon, Yemen and Kuwait. With the exception of Iraq, data from all of these countries were

collected either through the Arab Barometer, which I co-direct with Amaney Jamal, or as part of

an NSF-funded project on which I was the principal investigator. Data collection in Iraq was

supported by the NSF as part of a project that I co-directed with Ronald Inglehart and Mansoor

Moaddel. There were at least two surveys, separated by a two- or three-year interval, in every

country, the one exception being Lebanon, where only one survey has thus far being conducted.

An additional Arab Barometer survey will soon be carried out in Bahrain. Finally, survey data

from Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, collected as part of the World Values

Survey, will also be used. There is overlap with respect to questions about governance and Islam

in the survey instruments of the WVS, the Arab Barometer and the various NSF-funded surveys.

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 Although several commercial public opinion firms have also recently investigated Arab

and Muslim attitudes and values, the data available for the present project differ in critical

respects. First, they probe attitudes pertaining to Islam and to domestic politics in significant

depth. Moreover, they not only ask about the role of religion in political affairs, there are also

many questions about the ways that Islamic prescriptions can and should be interpreted and

about personal norms and behavior that relate to Islam. Second, most of the surveys were

designed and carried out in close collaboration with local scholars, who participated in the

construction of the survey instruments and in planning other aspects of the research. Third, the

surveys were designed with the explicit goal of measuring more abstract normative orientations

and of modeling the dynamics of attitude formation. Accordingly, I believe that data set I have

assembled breaks new ground and has the potential to address what has been a major deficiency

in our understanding of political attitudes and values in the Arab world, particularly those

pertaining to Islam.

Although I have written a number of articles based on these data, I have not yet looked in

depth at the questions identified above, which are the focus of the study I now propose to

undertake. As indicated, these include:

• What political values and conceptions are held by citizens who favor secularism and by
citizens who favor a political formula that is not only democratic but is also Islamic in some
meaningful way?
• What factors explain why different individuals come to different conclusions about the way
their country should be governed, and about the place of Islam in political affairs in
particular?
• To what extent, and with what analytical implications, do distributions and variable
relationships vary over time?