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.