Jolanda van der Noll

Political Tolerance and Prejudice: Differential Reactions Toward Muslims in the Netherlands

The aim of this study was to explain political tolerance for Muslims from an intergroup perspective. Explanatory mechanisms were derived from integrated threat theory, social identity theory, and the contact and multiculturalism hypotheses. Our results, based on survey data among Dutch youth and by using structural equation modeling, revealed that endorsement of multiculturalism and perceived symbolic and safety threat were the main determinants of political tolerance. Furthermore, we compared the explanatory model for prejudiced and nonprejudiced participants. Perceived safety threat was not associated with tolerance judgments among the nonprejudiced participants. All other relationships were similar for the two groups of participants.

Anti-Islam or Anti-religion? Understanding Objection against Islamic Education

Opposition against the accommodation of Islam in Western societies is often attributed to a prejudice against Muslims. This overlooks the possibility that opposition against Islam could also be caused by a more general aversion towards religion and a desire for a stricter separation between the state and religion in general. Based on the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) of 2012, the current study investigated the non-Muslim majoritys attitude towards religious education preferences in German public schools. By applying a multinomial logit model, we examined to what extent Islamophobic, xenophobic and religious attitudes predict whether people (i) support the provision of Islamic education, (ii) prefer only Christian education or (iii) opt for no religious education at all. Results show that Islamophobic and xenophobic attitudes are relevant indicators of objection against the provision of Islamic education in particular, while religiosity and religious style determine whether people support having religious education in general. Furthermore, the effect of Islamophobia and xenophobia depends on religious style. With these results the current study provides a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying resistance towards accommodating Islam in the public sphere.

Opposing the veil in the name of liberalism: popular attitudes to liberalism and Muslim veiling in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Is popular antagonism towards Muslim veils in Europe rooted in an exclusionary ‘enlightenment liberalism’? By examining different conceptions of liberalism and readings of veiling in a Dutch survey from 2014, we present the first study that investigates this question empirically. We thus bring together two hitherto largely unconnected literatures. The first is the work on immigration and ethnicity, which has shown the centrality of enlightenment liberalism in anti-Muslim media and policy discourses. The second is the literature on anti-Muslim attitudes in public opinion, which explains support for veil bans as the result of perceiving veils as threatening the respondents own, supposedly liberal, values – but has failed to distinguish between different conceptions of liberalism and thus reached inconclusive results. This, we show, can be remedied by distinguishing between ‘enlightenment liberals’, who hold negative attitudes, and ‘reformation liberals’, who hold positive attitudes towards Muslim veils.

Societal level of religiosity and religious identity expression in Europe

Growing diversity in terms of values and worldviews is one of the main challenges in current European societies. It is often argued that, in these societies, suspicion toward some aspects and forms of religion, if not religion in general is one of the main obstacles toward the acceptance of minority religious practices. In this article, we focused on the role of religion as a part of culture across European societies in allowing or inhibiting the expression of a religious identity by wearing visible religious symbols in the workplace. We examined the, intuitive but still to be tested, assumption that religious identity expression is more accepted in societies with an elevated level of societal religiosity in a European context. Using the 2006 data of Eurobarometer 65.4 on discrimination, we examined differences in the acceptance of religious identity expression through support for wearing visible religious symbols in 26 European societies. Results of multilevel analyses showed cross-societal variation in the acceptance of wearing visible religious symbols and that societal religiosity positively predicts the acceptance of religious identity expression. Our results showed that it is meaningful to differentiate between European countries when examining the role of cultural characteristics at the societal level when analyzing individual attitudes related to identity expressions and their acceptance.

Muslim Immigration, Critical Events, and the Seeds of Majority Members’ Support for Radical Responses: An Interactionist Perspective

This article uses an interactionist perspective to understand the role of media framings of critical events in catalyzing Western citizens’ support for radical responses to Muslim immigration (e.g., armed self-defense). A multi-method series of three studies tested this perspective in the context of the 2015/2016 Cologne New Year’s Eve sexual assaults on women. Study 1, a content analysis of 163 online newspaper articles, revealed that mass media attributed the assaults to the suspects’ Muslim culture. Study 2, a correlational study (N = 487) conducted at the peak of the media coverage, confirmed that the degree to which participants accepted the veracity of the culture-focused media representation strengthened the relation between their feelings of symbolic threat as a result of Muslim immigration and their approval of radical responses. Study 3, an experiment with pre-registered hypotheses (N = 91), replicated and extended these interaction effects. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Growing Up in a Diverse Society: Adolescents’ Interest in Parental Religious Socialization Messages

ABSTRACT Because Western societies are becoming increasingly religiously diverse, the sociocultural context in which young adolescents currently grow up differs from that of their parents. This raises the question to what extent adolescents are interested in communicating with their parents about religion. In a cross-sectional study of 498 Belgian adolescents ages 12–18-years (mean age = 14.94, SD = 1.34), we examined how adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion was related to the link between parental religious socialization messages and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Testing two models, we aimed to understand whether (a) adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion mediated the link between parental religious socialization and adolescent religious out-group attitudes or (b) parental religious socialization mediated the link between adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Results revealed a dynamic interplay between study variables, and highlighted the importance of considering adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion.

A comparative analysis of Chinese urban citizens’ attitudes towards the EU, the United States, Russia and Japan

What are the attitudes towards the European Union (EU), the United States, Russia and Japan among Chinese urban citizens, and how can we explain these attitudes? These are the intriguing questions that we want to answer in this article. The image, social identity, trust, and political socialization theories proposed the various explanatory variables. We assessed their explanatory powers by analysing survey data from more than 2000 Chinese urban citizens. Most empirical evidence is found for the image theory: positive perceptions of the people (trustworthy and peaceful) and the bilateral relationship (friendly) clearly contribute to positive attitudes.