Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-14-2020
Abstract
Substantial scholarship argues that regulation of religion suppresses religiosity in a community by reducing individuals’ satisfaction with their religious experience. To date this research has assumed that regulations are enforced on and affect religious communities uniformly. It has also focused heavily on Western Christian populations and aggregated national data. We suggest that state regulation of religious communities and behaviours impacts citizens differently based on their affiliation. Using individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Muslim-majority countries, we show that, at the individual level, restricting freedom suppresses religious belief and behaviour. Restrictions on religious minorities, however, can increase religiosity. As such, we question the religious market theory literature’s conclusion that the freest religious markets must have the greatest levels of religious participation. We also raise concerns about current measures of religious freedom’s capacity to measure individuals’ freedom in Muslim-majority countries.
Recommended Citation
“State Regulation of Religion: The Effect of Religious Freedom on Muslims' Religiosity.” Religion, State and Society 48(4). 256-275.
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Taylor & Francis
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
Islamic Studies Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Political Theory Commons, Religion Law Commons
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in Religion, State and Society, volume 48, issue 4, in 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2020.1804781. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.