Gauging Political Tolerance through a List Experiment: Findings from a Survey of American Muslims

Abstract

Do the considerations motivating political tolerance vary between majority and minority populations? Does theological intolerance breed political intolerance? This study addresses both these largely neglected questions, offering empirical evidence from original survey data augmented with a list experiment. The featured sample population is a socially salient community for which comparatively little quantitative data exists: American Muslims. Three key findings emerge from the analysis: 1) American Muslims are not broadly intolerant of groups that are anti-religion, but rather focus their intolerance towards those that specifically target Muslims; 2) affect toward Islamophobic groups is buttressed, in contradistinction to previous findings on political tolerance, not simply by sociotropic threat—threats to one’s way of life—but also by egocentric threat—threats to personal safety; and 3) of the religiosity variables tested on the pooled sample, only salvific exclusivity (an operationalization of theological intolerance) exerted a discernable impact on tolerance judgments. These results, in order, partially confirm, problematize and expand upon the existing literature on political tolerance. On a more practical level, these data also serve as a counterweight to Islamophobic discourses that cite presumably prevalent and broad American Muslim intolerance as a pretext for curbing that community’s civil liberties.