Disentangling Honor-Based Violence and Religion: The Differential Influence of Individual and Social Religious Practices and Fundamentalism on Support for Honor Killings in a Cross-National Sample of Muslims

Abstract

Religion is seen as one of the main causes of honor violence; yet, empirical studies investigating this purported relationship remain scarce. Therefore, we investigated how individual and social religious practices, religious fundamentalism, and demographic variables contribute to support for honor killings of women and men. We analyzed multinational face-to-face interview data of Muslims with a final sample size of N = 25,723. Using multilevel ordinal regression, we found that increased support for honor killings was strongly predicted by the frequency of mosque attendance, religious fundamentalism, a lower educational level, and living in a rural area. Conversely, gender and the frequency of private prayer did not significantly relate to support for honor killings. Thus, different aspects of religion have differential effects: Individual aspects of religious practice such as private prayer seem to be not significantly related to support for honor violence, whereas social aspects such as mosque attendance and religious fundamentalism strongly predict an increased support for honor killings.

What Shapes Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among European Muslims? The Role of Religiosity and Destination Hostility

“…Religiosity – In line with the more recent literature (Glas, Spierings and Scheepers 2018; Beller, Kröger and Hosser 2019; Van Klingeren and Spierings 2020) and our theoretical perspective, we distinguish between individual religiosity and mosque attendance. For individual religiosity, we rely on the item, “How religious are you?,” with responses ranging from 0 (not at all religious) to 10 (very religious).…”

“…2 In the case of homosexuality, the mainstream view in Islamic teaching does not consider homosexuality as condoned in Islam (Nahas 2001;Dibi 2015), and while not the only view, this view is widespread not only in Muslim-majority countries but also in mosques across Western Europe (ibid.). Mosque attendees are, thus, more strongly exposed to these views than Muslims who practice their religion privately, reinforcing commitment to the in-group and lowering support for behavior that violates group norms (Beller, Kröger and Hosser 2019). Moreover, mosque attendance is a social activity which allows Muslims with a migration background to stay connected with their origin community (Guveli et al 2016;Van Klingeren and Spierings 2020).…”

Religiosity and perceived religious discrimination as predictors of support for suicide attacks among Muslim Americans.

“…Future studies should examine this potential source of bias-for example, by using scales that directly assess social desirability (e.g., Hart, Ritchie, Hepper, & Gebauer, 2015). Furthermore, while suicide attacks might be one of the most salient and timely examples of EV, there are other putative instances of EV, such as honor killings or hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim minorities, for which our conclusions might not be replicable (Beller, Kröger, & Hosser, 2019). Other studies might use more prevalent examples of EV, including support for religiously motivated interpersonal and punitive violence.…”

Fostering Interreligious Love through Reflecting upon the Dual Metaphor of Christ in Revelation 5:5-6

“…Religious violence is the fact that the world has to fight. Practically, perpetrators of religious violence could be done individually or communally as groups of people [6]. This reality gets more complicated, considering some religious leaders consent to violence in the name of their religions [7].…”