The role of Muslim identity in predicting violent behavioural intentions to defend Muslims

Milan Obaidi,Joanna Lindström,Elif Celebi,Robin Bergh,Merve Baykal,Gulnaz Anjum

doi:10.1177/1368430220920929

Abstract

A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world. Therefore, in the current paper we hypothesized that the social psychological underpinnings of Islamist extremism would be similar for Muslims living in the West and Muslims living in countries with prolonged and ongoing exposure to Western-led military interventions. Across 4 studies among Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan ( Ns = 425, 402, and 127) and Muslims living in 20 Western countries ( N = 366), we examined a path model in which group-based anger mediated the link between Muslim identification, perceived injustice of Western military and foreign policy, and violent behaviour intentions. Our results indicate that regardless of whether Muslims live in places with prolonged and ongoing experience of Western military interventions or not, the social psychological factors predicting violent Islamist extremism appear to be similar. We discuss implications for future theory and research.

Highlights

A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world
We first describe the reasons why we focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we describe each sample
To address the objectives of this paper, we conducted a multigroup path analysis, comparing two samples of Muslim Pakistanis living in Pakistan, Muslim Afghans living in Afghanistan, and Muslim Pakistanis living in Western societies

Summary

Introduction

A sense of shared Muslim suffering seems to play a key role in uniting Muslims around the world. In a nascent line of social psychological research, some have applied a social identity perspective on collective action and group-based emotions to explain Islamist extremism (Doosje, Loseman, & Van den Bos, 2013; Obaidi, Bergh, Sidanius, & Thomsen, 2018; Tausch et al, 2011). According to these perspectives, Islamist extremism represents one example of general group identification processes. Even if such general explanations are plausible, there is still a need to examine these processes in different contexts where Islamist extremism is prevalent

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Discussion

Conclusion