Clerics and Scriptures: Experimentally Disentangling the Influence of Religious Authority in Afghanistan

Abstract

This article unpacks the psychological influence of a Muslim cleric’s power to mobilize for collective action in an experiment in Afghanistan. The same cleric requests contributions for a hospital from day laborers when dressed as a civilian and as a cleric. InCiviliancondition, 50 per cent contributed and 17 per cent made large contributions; inClericcondition, 83 per cent contributed but average giving did not increase as most gave the smallest possible amount. Inclusion of a recitation of Qur’anic verses in theClericcondition maintains the 82 per cent contribution rate while increasing large contributions to 30 per cent, doubling average contributions. Formal education and subjective perception of poverty appear to drive the opposing effects of cleric and scripture. These results suggest that the power to activate spiritual channels lies in the scripture, not with the human wielding religious authority, who instead appears to induce minimal compliance with Islamic norms of charitable giving.

Can Appeals For Peace Promote Tolerance and Mitigate Support for Extremism? Evidence from an Experiment with Adolescents in Burkina Faso

“…Where armed groups invoke religious doctrine to justify violence and recruit supporters, policymakers increasingly amplify the voices of moderate religious leaders as credible sources of pro-peace messaging. Many of these interventions draw on research that finds that religious leaders can encourage pro-social attitudes and behaviors by the nature of their divinely-ordained authority, by promising divine rewards, or by drawing on scripture to persuade the faithful (Masoud, Jamal and Nugent 2016;Condra, Isaqzadeh and Linardi 2019). Spreading the messages shared by these leaders is part of a broader strategy to counter violent extremism by winning the hearts and minds of potential recruits (Berman, Felter and Shapiro 2020).…”

“…Drawing upon recent studies emphasizing the importance of religious messaging, this article tests whether religious appeals for peace shift at-risk youths' attitudes and behavior toward out-groups and violent extremism in a setting with a growing Islamic extremist insurgency (McClendon and Riedl 2015;Masoud, Jamal and Nugent 2016;Condra, Isaqzadeh and Linardi 2019). International collaboration with local, moderate religious leaders has become an increasingly popular strategy to disseminate appeals for tolerance and counteract extremist narratives (Blair et al 2020).…”

Does the Bible Tell Me So? Weighing the Influence of Content versus Bias on Bible Interpretation Using Survey Experiments

“…They found that the Qur'an group was more likely to support women's political leadership compared to a control group that received the same argument without Qur'anic support. And most recently, Condra, Isaqzadeh, and Linardi (2019) reported that participants in Afghanistan who were presented with specific Qur'anic verses were significantly more likely to donate large sums of money to charity than the control group. While the treatment in both studies consisted of exposure to authoritative texts versus no exposure (rather than varying the content of the text between groups), both studies suggest that exposure to messages in authoritative religious texts yields significant attitudinal results.…”

Fighting from the Pulpit: Religious Leaders and Violent Conflict in Israel

“…Indeed, research has shown that religious leaders have a large and substantive influence on a host of controversial moral political issues, even when these messages are crosscutting (Djupe and Calfano 2013;Ben-Nun Bloom, Arikan, and Courtemanche 2015;Masoud, Jamal, and Nugent 2016;Margolis 2018). Moreover, exposure to religious teachings leads to more charitable giving and pro-social behavior (Warner et al 2015;McClendon and Riedl 2015;Condra, Isaqzadeh, and Linardi 2017). Finally, religious leaders can also use prayer times to mobilize for street protests (Butt 2016).…”