Lithuanian Muslims’ attitudes toward participation in the democratic political process: the case of converts

Abstract

In the analysis of the attitudes toward and actual participation in the political process in the country, the most interesting group from among Lithuania’s Muslims are its citizens who have converted to Islam. This is so because their attitudes toward participation in politics could be presumed to have been shaped and influenced by numerous experiences and factors of both an internal and an external nature, major among which are different levels of personal and group socialisation and access to and influence of ‘Islamic’ texts and other material on one’s worldview. As converts are usually very keen on painstakingly observing rules and regulations of their newly adopted religion, as they see them, it is to be expected that the ‘Islamic factor’ should have a profound influence on how they perceive democracy as a political system per se, its compatibility with Islam, and finally their personal decision to take or not to take part in the democratic political process.