I N THEIR OWN VOICES: WHAT IT IS TO BE A MUSLIM AND A CITIZEN IN THE WEST

Transcription

1 P ART I I N THEIR OWN VOICES: WHAT IT IS TO BE A MUSLIM AND A CITIZEN IN THE WEST Methodological Introduction to Chapters Two, Three, and Four In order to contextualize the analyses provided in chapters 2, 3, and 4, it is important to note that they build on three different sources: original research from the IIW program including 60 focus groups discussions, a structured survey conducted in Berlin, and an analytical review of preexisting quantitative data on Muslim religiosity and political participation. Focus Group Data From 2007 to 2010, nine to twelve focus groups were organized in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Boston under the auspices of the IIW program. These cities were selected to reflect the socioeconomic and cultural situation of most Western Muslims from converts to second or third generations of immigrants. From the existing literature, we know that most Muslims live in urban centers or their peripheries; they are engaged in a broad spectrum of professions and jobs, and represent a wide range of ages, ethnicities, and educational levels. 1 In order to recruit the participants, our strategy was to deliberately avoid Muslim leaders and members of religious or social organizations. We wanted to reach out to people who are part of the silent majority the anonymous Muslims who do not speak on a regular basis to media, politicians, or researchers. For this reason, we adopted an immersion strategy in different places where Muslims usually socialized, such as malls and coffee shops. We also distributed leaflets in different places in an attempt to be as random as possible in the selection of focus group participants (for focus group composition, see appendix 1). This method, albeit more time consuming, facilitated the participation of a wide range of Muslims, including Somalis, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Moroccans,

2 22 Why the West Fears Islam Turks, Kurds, Lebanese, and Bangladeshis. Their age range and gender were equitably distributed, as well as the different generations of migrants. However, in London, due to the makeup of Muslims in the city, a significant representation of refugees was present. Moreover, as a rule, we tended to privilege second or third generations, as they are the groups at the center of the externalization process described in chapter 1. For each city, we also targeted the most significant ethnic groups in their respective countries. For example: Algerians, Moroccans, Turks, and Senegalese in Paris; Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam; Turks, Moroccans, and Bosnians in Berlin; Pakistani and Bangladeshi in London; and Pakistani, Turks, Lebanese, and African Americans in Boston. In each city, we convened groups based on ethnicity and gender, as well as mixed groups in terms of each. The reason for such an arrangement was to capture the ethnic/cultural and gender variations. For instance, in Paris, groups were divided as follows: Male North African/Turks/Senegalese and Women North African/ Turks/Senegalese (six groups), Coed based on ethnicity (three groups), Coed ethnically mixed (two groups), and Control group of immigrants from non-muslim backgrounds (West African migrants). Each group was led by two researchers, one male and one female for coed groups, and of same gender for gender-divided groups. One researcher was the main moderator while the other individual acted more like a rapporteur, although he or she could also ask questions or steer the discussion. All sessions were recorded and transcribed. Each session lasted an average of two to three hours. In each group, discussions were generated to explore the following issues: attitudes toward participation in national politics political participation at the neighborhood, city, and national level feelings about important issues facing contemporary French, German, American, British, or Dutch society involvement in community activities assessment of non-muslim perceptions of Muslims and changes in these perceptions since 9/11 attitudes toward Islamic religious organizations at the local and national level involvement in religious organizations or mosques

3 In Their Own Voices 23 (See focus group discussion guidelines in appendix 2.) The focus groups had three goals. The first was to collect materials to explore the religiosity of Muslims across different cultural and political contexts. The second was to see how religiosity influences political participation, whether positively or negatively. And, based on this new research, the third was to produce specific questions that could more adequately measure Islamic religiosity. With regard to the first goal, the group discussions produced a very rich, diverse, and, often times, contradictory approach to Islamic religiosity and political engagement. Concerning the second goal, we could identify interesting connections between attachment to Islam (belonging) and a sense of civic engagement and community, especially at the local level. Finally, regarding the third goal, the focus group results helped us create a new questionnaire on Islamic religious and political participation that was tested in Berlin. Berlin Survey (2010 ) The focus groups across European and American cities allowed us to identify some links between Muslim religiosity, civic and political participation, and local context. Building on the materials from the focus groups, our next step was to create a new questionnaire to better understand the interactions between Islam and political participation. We utilize questions from standard surveys concerning voting pattern, partisan identification, and trust in political institutions (see questionnaire in appendix 3). In standard surveys, however, questions regarding religious observance are either very rare or not adapted to Muslims. They tend to conflate mosque attendance with praying and pay insufficient attention to the fact that mosque attendance may be more ethnic or social than religious. As shown by a few surveys, mosques provide the opportunity to socialize in a preferred cultural network, especially after 9/11. 2 We realized that we needed finer-grained questions than mosque attendance in order to understand various forms of Muslim religiosity and their relationship to societal engagement. Thus, we created a new battery of questions to examine the relationship between forms of Islam and levels of civic and political participation. Our goal was to respond to the following questions: is Islamic faith or a particular Islamic worldview associated with social or political engagement or with withdrawal from a hopelessly problematic society? Is civic and political participation seen as a vehicle for assimilation into the insider s world, a way to remake what counts from the inside, or a way to maintain a cherished outsider s community? To narrow responses, we also added specific questions on social and cultural practices related to Islamic beliefs such as gender interactions or relationship with sexual minorities.

4 24 Why the West Fears Islam We tested the questionnaire in Berlin, conducted in face-to-face situation, from February to March Representative of the Muslim population in Berlin, the basic demographics of the group surveyed are as follows: 52 percent male (82 respondents) 48 percent female (75 respondents) 56 percent Turkish 20 percent Bosnian 25 percent Lebanese and Palestinian 5 percent other 33 percent years old (53) 40 percent years old (63) 22 percent over 50 years old (35) The results of this experimental survey are presented in the following chapters in order to nuance the focus group findings regarding the influence of religion on political participation. Content Analysis of the Focus Group Discussions The transcripts from the focus groups were analyzed with the NVivo 9 program. It uses automated classification techniques to sort electronic transcripts of data and interviews into themes and groups. We were interested in establishing both religious and political profiles for Muslims in each of the cities. We looked for the significant terms that define what it is to be a Muslim in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Boston; the idea being that the most relevant terms will garner number of references in the matrices. The religious terms of interest included: beliefs (system of morals and values associated with the individual or Islam), struggle of being a Muslim (difficulty and negativity associated with identity as a Muslim), hijab (head covering for Muslim women), identity (association of one s personality with certain values or beliefs), praying (religious act demonstrating faith to Islam), and social or cultural behaviors influenced by Islamic beliefs. The political terms of interest included: citizenship (associated with civic duty to a country), government (local or national levels), participation (engagement in politically associated events and activities),

5 In Their Own Voices 25 politics (holding office or playing an active role in campaigns), and voting (act of voting or urging others to vote for public officials). Other terms included community (the integration of an individual into the surrounding society) and family (one s blood relatives). A portion of matrix dealing specifically with highly and minimally mentioned political terms of interest were compiled as well. The highly mentioned political topics included: 9/11 (refers to terrorist attacks perpetrated on the United States on September 11, 2001), country (one s nation), involvement (in community and political life), organizations (groups united under a certain commonality), politics, rules (binding guidelines regarding religious practices), true-truth (the integrity of Islam as a valid religion), vote. Political terms of low interest compiled into the matrix included: animal rights, bad publicity, democratic structure, domestic politics, extremism, local politics, NGO (nongovernmental organization), social system. NVivo 9 produced several key sources. First, it created a series of matrices that were essentially three-dimensional histograms, crossing topics of interest against a number of focus group interviews, with each bar measured by its respective focus group and topic s individual frequency (number of references in a focus group). The matrices were formed according to city, gender, ethnicity, and level of interest (high or low political interests). Each matrix combined political and religious terms of significance in order to better allow for comparisons of the relative importance of the various priorities in the Muslim community. Second, we created a comprehensive topic-of-interest list that tabulated the number of references respondents made to certain topics of interest. That process also took into account the context in which a topic of interest was referenced (positive, negative, or neutral). Each topic of interest was broken down into these three contexts, thus, allowing for the possibility

6 26 Why the West Fears Islam of investigating correlations. Positive correlations were observed by a low negative frequency and a high positive frequency. Negative correlations were the exact opposite, with high negative frequency and low positive frequency. The list of topics were the same as those of the matrices: beliefs, citizenship, community, country, family, government, being a Muslim, identity, participation, politics, praying, secularism, and vote. Another master word list was compiled of all of the political and religious terms and bodies of significance (for a complete list of these words, see appendix 6). Third, the master word list was further filtered so as to tabulate only responses provided by the focus groups specific to each city. This separate list filtered out the following terms: associations with 9/11, the meaning of citizenship, civic involvement in the community, civil rights mobilization, Europe, identity of the respondents, institutionalized politics, important elements of Islam, the media. Finally, a series of individual interviews was extracted from the focus group transcripts. From these transcripts, quotes of interest were compiled into a final report. The topics of interest were: what is Islam, identity, worship, morals, the importance of Islam, voting, trust in institutions and society, other religions and ethnicities, citizenship and community, loyalty, and the importance of country of origin in political perception. The results of this content analysis were interpreted in the broader context of existing data on Muslim political participation and religiosity from surveys conducted in Western Europe and the United States. Focus Group Results in Context How do the focus group results fit into the broader context of existing data on Muslims in Europe and the United States? First, existing surveys vary widely in terms of source, time period covered, question content, and nature. In terms of source, they come primarily from think tanks and research organizations (Open Society Foundation, the Pew Global Attitudes Surveys, and the Gallup Coexist Surveys), nonprofit advocacy organizations (Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation), and government-sponsored surveys, especially in the Netherlands and Germany. Second, especially in regard to the European surveys conducted in recent years, the most serious bias concerns the control group to which the surveyed Muslims were compared. In almost all instances, Muslims were compared to the general population (presumably including a percentage of Muslims), referenced as non Muslim. Only the French INED data separated non-muslim respondents by confession (Protestant, Catholic, Other) and further separated those who have no religion. Contrasting Muslims to undifferentiated non-muslims or the general public is a misleading way to capture the specificity of Muslim religiosity. The relevant comparison would be between self-declared Muslims and other self-declared religious or nonreligious groups. In this regard, the

7 In Their Own Voices 27 surveys conducted in the United States by Pew and Gallup did differentiate the surveyed population according to religious affiliation and were therefore more relevant to our purpose (see appendix 5 for all surveys used for analytical review). Overview of Part One The following chapters explore the religious ( chapter 2 ), social and political identities (chapters 3 and 4) of Muslims as revealed by the focus groups discussions and their comparison with preexisting quantitative data. This analysis shows that Islam is far from being the independent variable explaining their social and political behaviors. Most strikingly, the narrative of Muslims that implicitly emerges from the focus group discussions is at the antipodes of the Western narrative described in chapter 1. Specifically our results show that Muslims resist any collective identification to Islam, do not see incompatibility between their personal religious identity and their national community of residence, and even envision Islam as an asset to their civic engagement.