Abstract
The present study investigated to what extent memory of conflict and perceived threat explain the relation between religiosity and supporting interreligious conflicts between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia. We employed data from the survey of the interreligious conflicts in 2017, involving 2026 adults from five hotspot regions: Aceh Singkil, South Lampung, Bekasi, Poso, and Kupang. Our confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance demonstrated that all employed scales were valid and reliable across religious groups. Our structural equation modelling showed that while the memory of conflicts was only positively related to supporting lawful protests, the perceived threat was shown to be strongly related to supporting both lawful and violent protests. This shows that memory of past physical injuries is not highly susceptible to exclusive behaviours against the religious outgroup. However, it is the individuals’ evaluation of the religious outgroup as a result of past conflicts which encourages exclusionary behaviours against them. These findings provide empirical insights into the importance of the aftermath of interreligious conflicts and how they can be used to avoid future clashes.
Highlights
We have argued that memory of conflicts and perceived threat can further explain the relation between religious identity and the possibility of future interreligious conflicts
We found that the scores of variance inflation factor (VIF) and tolerance statistics of the predictors are within the normal range of less than 10 and more than 0.2 respectively (Field 2009)
As for religiocentrism, we found that it is positively related to memory of conflicts (b = 0.09, p = 0.00) and perceived threat towards the religious outgroup (b = 0.47, p = 0.00)
Summary
This fact is nothing new and has long been predicted by
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have