Islamic Headcovering and Political Engagement: The Power of Social Networks

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between headcovering and women's political participation through an original online survey of 1,917 Muslim-American women. As a visible marker of religious group identity, wearing the headscarf can orient the integration of Muslim women into the American political system via its impact on the openness of their associational life. Our survey respondents who cover are more likely to form insular, strong ties with predominantly Muslim friend networks, which decreased their likelihood of voting and affiliating with a political party. Interestingly, frequency of mosque attendance across both covered and uncovered respondents is associated with a higher probability of political participation, an effect noted in other religious institutions in the United States. Yet, mosque attendance can simultaneously decrease the political engagement of congregants if they are steered into exclusively religious friend groups. This discovery reveals a tension within American Muslim religious life and elaborates on the role of religious institutions vs. social networks in politically mobilizing Muslim-Americans.

Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in the West: Assessing the Effects of the French Headscarf Ban

“…Finally, our paper also contributes to a burgeoning literature on the politics of the headscarf. Scholars document that veiled women report experiencing discrimination at higher rates relative to other Muslim Americans (Dana et al 2019), and several papers link these discriminatory experiences to greater political activism (Jalalzai 2011;Westfall et al 2017). We provide causal evidence that institutional discrimination differentially affects Muslim women's outcomes beyond political participation.…”

Veiled Politics: Experiences with Discrimination among Muslim Americans

“…Importantly, this finding is robust across different measures of discrimination, model specifications, and datasets. This suggests that hijabi women are particularly vulnerable as the climate of Islamophobia worsens in the wake of Donald Trump's ascendance to the presidency and the implementation of targeted policies such as the “Muslim ban.” Partly as a function of this vulnerability, hijabi women may continue to gravitate toward insular networks and feel less inclined to engage in mainstream political activities (Westfall et al 2017). This should raise normative concerns for political scientists, legal scholars, advocates, and public officials.…”

Mosque Involvement and Political Engagement in the United States

“…These trends demonstrate a transition from Muslims’ historical preference for more socially conservative politics (Cho, Gimpel, and Wu 2006; Djupe and Green 2007; Pew 2007; Barreto and Bozonelos 2009). The limited variance in party identification has reoriented research on Muslim-American party identification to focus more on partisan identification more generally, and to consider the disenfranchisement of Muslim Americans from the political party system (see Barreto and Bozonelos 2009; Westfall et al 2017). This paper likewise focuses on whether a survey respondent identifies with a primary political party, versus identifying as an independent, some other party, or indicating no preference for a political party.…”

“…In the last four presidential elections in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016, between 80 and 90% of the Muslim vote went in favor of the Democratic candidate. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these trends in voting and identification represent homogenous political preferences, as many Muslims align themselves with conservative social values and economic policies, yet vote for Democratic candidates due to the anti-Islamic and stridently Christian rhetoric coming from the right in the post 9/11 context (Westfall et al 2017). It is therefore expected that the diversity of Muslim political preferences should resemble that of other Americans, and that the added ethnic and national diversity should further deepen mosque-goers exposure to the kind of diversity that drives social influence.…”