Oil, Islam, and the Middle East: An Empirical Analysis of the Repression of Religion, 1980–2013

Abstract

There is a lively debate on the relative impacts of Islam, oil wealth, and Middle Eastern institutional legacies regarding democratization and the spread of liberal values. We examine this issue using religious repression. We argue that oil-wealthy rulers use religious monopoly to control dissent. Our results show that oil wealth increases religious repression above the effects of Muslim dominance and a host of sundry controls. The MENA region seems to matter more than Islam. Interestingly, the conditional effect of oil and the MENA region is positive on religious freedom. The data suggest that several Gulf monarchies have more religious freedoms than other Muslim dominant states, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, or even Israel and Jordan. The worst religious repression is among oil producers in Central Asia. The results are robust to a host of intervening factors, different measures of oil wealth, alternative data on religious freedom, and estimating method.3

Political equality for women and the poor: Assessing the effects and limits of world society, 1975–2010

“… 17. The fact that our measures of political equality respond differently to INGO linkages in Middle Eastern and “other” Islamic countries accords with research showing that Middle Eastern countries are less likely than predominantly Muslim countries elsewhere to be democratic (Stepan and Robertson, 2003), to undergo democratization (Teorell, 2010), to respect religious freedom (Albertsen and de Soysa, 2018), and to liberalize laws regarding sexual activity (Frank et al, 2010). …”

“…Because Christianity shapes values differently inside and outside of the West (Inglehart, 2007; Jenkins, 2006), we create separate categories for Orthodox Christian, Latin American Catholic, and other non-Western Christian countries. Likewise, Islam’s effect on a variety of social and political outcomes differs in the Middle East and elsewhere (Albertsen and de Soysa, 2018; Frank et al, 2010; Stepan and Robertson, 2003; Teorell, 2010), so we distinguish between Middle Eastern and other Islamic nations. We further identify Buddhist and Hindu countries, grouping all other countries into a residual category.…”

Is Islam Compatible with Free-Market Capitalism? An Empirical Analysis, 1970–2010

“…Moreover, many areas outside of the Middle East, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, manage electoral democracy quite well. Some even report that majority-Muslim countries are less likely to repress human rights and religious freedoms compared with other religions, particularly after controlling for structural factors, such as the production of oil (Albertsen and de Soysa 2017).…”

Islamic Neoliberalism for Jordan's Islamic Action Front in Islamic Banking and Finance

“…Finally, the Islamized technologies for sales, loans, financing, bonds, mortgages, and even insurance is often criticized for being Islamic in name but not fundamentally different than those offered at conventional banks (Maurer 2005, 24–26). Furthermore, as Albertsen and de Soysa (2018) point out countries with a Muslim majority of over 50% are positively associated with free-market capitalism, and is positively associated with many markers of neoliberal economics including limited government, free trade, and low levels of regulation. This means that neoliberal policies can be easily financed by Islamic banks; there is nothing that structurally prevents Islamic banking and finance from being utilized for neoliberal ends.…”