Muslim Subjects Research Articles

A. C. S. Peacock and Annabel Teh Gallop, eds. From Anatolia to Aceh: Ottomans, Turks, and Southeast Asia

This edited volume in the Proceedings of the British Academy series is comprised of 14 chapters covering interactions between the two regions from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. Its various chapters were developed out of papers originally prepared for a workshop held at the International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (ICAIOS) in Banda Aceh in 2012 as part of a collaborative project between the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA) and the Association for South-East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (ASEASUK) on Islam, Trade, and Politics across the Indian The editors have done a remarkable job here in bringing together the work of historians and philologists to produce a volume of studies tightly focused along clearly defined axes of interaction between the two regions. Their efforts have produced a book that makes significant and meaningful contributions to our understandings of these trans-regional dynamics in the history of Southeast Asia. In this it both complements and substantially enriches a growing library of work focused on analogous vectors of the historical connections of Southeast Asia with the Arab Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia.1'The editors' very fine introduction to the collection presents an engaging overview of the field, highlighting the ways in which the various chapters contribute to developing richer and more nuanced understandings of diverse modalities of connection between the two regions. It is followed by a chapter from Anthony Reid, whose pioneering work stimulated a growing body of research on this field since his first publication on connections between the Ottomans and Aceh in 1969. In his chapter for this volume, Reid has produced a new essay that provides rich contexts for understand1) ing the findings of this more recent scholarship in a magisterial overview of ways in which understandings of both the historical and imagined relationships between the two regions have developed over more than four centuries.The remainder of the volume is comprised of a series of focused, in-depth case studies of particular examples of political, religious, economic, and literary connections between the two regions-including the presentation of new work on a wide range of archival sources. Jorge Santos Alves begins by introducing a previously little known dimension of sixteenth century OttomanSoutheast Asian interactions in the role played by Jews of Portuguese origin (who had lost much to both the Inquisition and the Estado da India) that were active at Istanbul in supporting a stronger anti-Portuguese stance in the Indian Ocean. The economic focus is also central to Andrew Peacock's own chapter, which highlights the importance of looking beyond diplomatic connections to the particulars of both trade commodities and the careers of individual merchants to develop more fine-grained depictions of connections as embodied in the people and things that moved between the two regions.Diplomatic and political relations return to center stage in several of the chapters that follow. Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells takes as her focus the Hadrami diaspora in the Netherlands Indies with an examination of both their pragmatic collaboration and resistance in light of appeals to their rights as Ottoman citizens. Isaac Donoso's chapter presents us with yet another case in which colonial views of the ties binding Muslims in Southeast Asia to the Ottoman Empire and the heartlands of Islam factored into diverse political projects. The other chapter in this volume focusing on the Philippines, by Gervase Clarence-Smith, opens up a window onto new dynamics introduced under American colonial rule and the remarkable experiments of this new colonial power with engaging the Ottomans as part of policies designed for the management of their Muslim subjects in Southeast Asia.The potential role of the Ottomans to influence the religious and political landscape of the region was, however, not purely the product of Western imaginations. …

The Effect of Religious Involvement on the Attitude towards Societal Work Norms-an empirical study of Muslim Subjects

The Effect of Religious Involvement on the Attitude towards Societal Work Norms-an empirical study of Muslim Subjects

Islam and the European Empires, ed. David Motadel

In the current climate of anxiety about the relationship between Europe and the Islamic world, it is easy to forget that it has a very long history—as old, indeed, as the seventh-century clash between the Byzantine empire and the first caliphate with its capital in Damascus. Muslims ruled over Christians, and Christians, in the crusading era, over Muslims. The medieval frontiers of conquest moved back and forth: Christians advanced in Spain but fell back in the Balkans. In the ‘age of discovery’, the Portuguese and Spanish ruled over pockets of Muslims in Southeast Asia, where they were joined by the Dutch after 1600. Far to the north, the Russians began their long expansion into Muslim Eurasia when Muscovy captured Kazan in 1552. However, it was really only from the later eighteenth century that the European empires began to acquire significant numbers of Muslim subjects and extended their influence more and more widely over Muslim communities.

Effects of Muslims praying (Salat) on EEG gamma activity

This study investigates the difference of mean gamma EEG power between actual and mimic Salat practices in twenty healthy Muslim subjects. In the actual Salat practice, the participants were asked to recite and performing the physical steps in all four stages of Salat; whereas in the mimic Salat practice, they were instructed to perform only the physical steps without recitation. The gamma power during actual Salat was statistically higher than during mimic Salat in the frontal and parietal regions in all stages. In the actual Salat practice, the left hemisphere exhibited significantly higher mean gamma power in all cerebral regions and all stages, except the central-parietal region in the sitting position, and the frontal area in the bowing position. Increased gamma power during Salat, possibly related to an increase in cognitive and attentional processing, supports the concept of Salat as a focus attention meditation.

Fasting in Ramadan Affects Cognitive and Physiological Function in Normal Subjects (Pilot Study)

Purpose: Our study aimed to investigate the effects of Ramadan fasting on cognitive and physiological function in a group of healthy Muslim subjects. Methods: We measured demographic, physiological (blood pressure), and cognitive function including attention switching task (AST) and delayed matching to sample (DMS) using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) at two periods of the study (before Ramadan, at the second week in Ramadan) in 15 subjects. Results: During fasting, performance on the AST test improved significantly for switching cost (p = 0.030) and for congruent condition of AST task (p = 0.043), for diastolic pressure decreased (p = 0.069) in healthy subjects. There was no significant effect for incongruent condition and number of errors and percent to complete task for DMS test and systolic blood pressure. Conclusions: The results suggest that Ramadan fasting is associated with significant changes in cognition, and causes a drop in diastolic blood pressure in healthy subject.

Leo Frobenius’ Secret Mission in Arabia and Eritrea (1914–1915)

This article is devoted to study the mission undertaken by ethnologist Leo Frobenius (1873–1938), who, in 1914–1915 and as a member of a German research expedition, attempted to reach Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) through Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Arabia and Eritrea, in order to liaise with the isolated German Legation in Addis Ababa and to spread revolution among the Muslim subjects of the British Empire in Arabia and in North Africa. The expedition, officially called “Fourth German Inner African Research Expedition”, was in truth a somewhat poorly organised political mission supported by the German and Turkish secret services, and in the end failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives.

Is the call to prayer a call to cooperate? A field experiment on the impact of religious salience on prosocial behavior

AbstractWhile religiosity is positively correlated with self-reported prosociality, observational and experimental studies on the long-hypothesized connection between religion and prosocial behavior have yielded mixed results. Recent work highlights the role of religious salience for stimulating prosocial behavior, but much of this research has involved priming Christian subjects in laboratory settings, limiting generalization to the real world. Here I present a field study conducted in the souks in the medina of Marrakesh, Morocco, which shows that religious salience can increase prosocial behavior with Muslim subjects in a natural setting. In an economic decision making task similar to a dictator game, shopkeepers demonstrated increased prosocial behavior when the Islamic call to prayer was audible compared to when it was not audible. This finding complements a growing literature on the connection between cultural cues, religious practices, and prosocial behavior, and supports the hypothesis that religious rituals play a role in galvanizing prosocial behavior.

Craving Bureaucracy: Marriage, Islamic Law, and Arab Petitioners in the Straits Settlements

AbstractBritish involvement in Muslim affairs in the Straits Settlements (Malacca, Penang and Singapore) was done at the behest of Muslim subjects in the colony. Arab Muslims, who were a minority in the region, exhorted British authorities to take charge of the administration of Muslim marriages and divorces. In this way, authority was vested by these Muslims in colonial legal institutions. Instead of trying to wrest religious authority from the secular colonial power, petitioners essentially attempted to remove religious authority from the hands of Muslim qāḍis by granting more control to non‐Muslim British colonial authorities. Though British authorities were initially reluctant to take on the mantle of administering legal lives of Muslim subjects who formed fifteen percent of the British Crown Colony, a petition in 1875 subsequently led to the application of legal codes and case law devised in British India in 1880 through the Mahomedan Marriage Ordinance that was brought into effect in 1882. This led to an unprecedented development in the administration of Islamic law in Southeast Asia. Thereafter, colonial legal practitioners relied heavily on this corpus of precedents and knowledge prepared by their predecessors in British India. Their conception of Islamic law was in other words based on a universal view of Islamic law, minimally affected by local understandings and customs. A universal view of Islam, coupled with centralized colonial bureaucracy suited the needs of highly mobile Arabs who traversed the Indian Ocean as they craved accountability on the part of legal administrators.

Piety, Transgression, and the Feminist Debate on Muslim Women: Resituating the Victim-Subject of Honor-Related Violence from a Transnational Lens

AbstractWhile I strongly endorse anti-imperialist feminist attempts to uphold devout Muslim women’s gendered agency, I am concerned that these arguments fail to disrupt the intransigent association of freedom, particularly individual freedom, with secularism, and communitarian restraint with Islam. It is not surprising, therefore, that victim-subjects of honor-related violence, whether in a secular state such as Canada or an Islamic state like Pakistan, are discursively installed within the universal secular sphere and reevicted from the religious and cultural community. I propose the notion of transgressive piety rather than the dichotomy of secular society versus pious community within which to problematize gendered Muslim subjects. The transgression of ritualistic and institutionalized practices is associated with practices termed Sufism. Muslim feminists may use the idea of transgressive piety to offer faith-based support to those gendered subjects whose transgressive acts, appearance, or practices de...

Effects of Ramadan fasting on glucose homeostasis and adiponectin levels in healthy adult males.

BackgroundAdiponectin is a hormone secreted by adipocytes during the fasting phase of the fast-fed cycle. Ramadan fasting involves prolonged fasting for up to twelve hours and thus could lead to increased secretion of adiponectin by adipocytes. However, studies on the role of adiponectin on glucose and body weight homeostasis during Ramadan fasting is still a matter of controversy. Thus the specific aim of this study was to assess the effect of fasting during Ramadan on the adiponectin levels, body weight and glucose homeostasis in healthy male Malaysian subjects.MethodsTwenty healthy male (19–23 years) Muslim subjects were followed up during the fasting month of Ramadan. Anthropometry and blood samples were taken one week before and during the fourth week of fasting. Plasma glucose, insulin and adiponectin were estimated and insulin sensitivity indices were estimated using the Homeostasis Model Assessment.ResultsSubjects experienced a significant decrease in body weight (2.4 %, p < 0.001) and body mass index (5.5 %, p < 0.01). There was also a significant decrease of 12.3 %, 52.8 % and 45.6 % of plasma glucose, insulin and adiponectin respectively (p < 0.01). The drop in adiponectin was positively correlated with the decrease in body weight (r = 0.45, p < 0.05). There was also a significant increase in insulin sensitivity and a decrease in insulin resistance (p < 0.01).ConclusionsThese results indicate that Ramadan fasting in young healthy individuals has a positive impact on the maintenance of glucose homeostasis. It also shows that adiponectin levels dropped along with significant loss in weight. We feel caloric restriction during the Ramadan fasting is in itself sufficient to improve insulin sensitivity in healthy individuals.

The Question Of Animal Slaughter In The British Straits Settlements During The Early Twentieth Century

Colonial law empowered British authorities to attempt to intervene in religious affairs. Rather than creating an atmosphere of open fruitful debate, colonial legal structures prevented useful discussions from occurring between colonial authorities and Muslim subjects that could lead to mutual understanding and useful consensus. In 1929, a Muslim butcher in the British Straits Settlement of Penang was fined in a British colonial court for causing unnecessary cruelty to a fowl, despite his claim that he had slaughtered the animal according to the proper Islamic method. The case forced the issue of religious slaughter into the public sphere, and sparked intense debates in the public press on the viability of Islamic method of animal slaughter. For Muslim subjects, animal slaughter was definitely a deeply religious issue. After all, the domain of the religious, generally envisioned as ‘private’ in British colonial imagination, enabled Muslim participation in the public sphere and civil society. Yet, religion sometimes fell out of the frame of discussion. Animal welfare groups robustly advocated stunning by electricity as a more effective, more humane method of slaughter. Other considerations such as general hygiene of slaughterhouses and economic considerations also played a large role in colonial intervention in animal slaughter since the early 20th century. British colonial policy put Muslim subjects on the high defensive that led to the stultification of transformations that were unlikely to stem from British colonial initiative. When discussions became acrimonious, colonial authorities would stifle dialogue by casting the issue as a religious one, thus removing it as a topic of sustained conversation.

Book Notes

Book Notes Imraan Sumar and Amina Inloes Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonisation and World Order, by S. Sayyid, 2014. London: C. Hurst, 236 + xi pp., £50.00. isbn: 978-1-84904-002-0 (hbk). For those looking aghast at the nature, scope, and trajectory of certain movements within the ‘Islamicate’ world, it is natural that the title of this densely packed small volume would be appealing in the hope of understanding just what is actually happening. That said, this is not actually the point of Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order, which is a skilled unpacking and unpicking of the narratives by which we have commonly tried to apprehend modern ‘Islamist’ movements as they have unfolded, and which aims to show precisely what is at stake when ill-considered language games and hermeneutics are employed in the traditionally chauvinistic ways of those speaking from the outside. A collection of edited previously written works as well as new material, this dense book demonstrates Sayyid’s command over current theory, as well as his important insights into the ways in which the ‘Plato to Nato’ workaday narratives lack a moral seriousness, and moreover, do little justice to the subject matter. He begins with a series of discussions on the questions of democracy, liberalism, and secularism to demonstrate why these discussions are almost confounded by a kind of chauvinism and suppression on the part of those who wish to see these things in the Islamicate world as well as Muslim subjects on the ground. His critiques and displacements of the common supremacist narratives effectively demonstrate that much theory is still bound up in a system of semantics and language games that are part of an orientalist and colonialist paradigm and power structure, and which do not acknowledge that events spanning as far back as the Rushdie affair are integral to the story of the decolonisation of the Islamicate world. Carefully ordered chapters help synthesise and build up a thoroughly argued and nuanced picture of the state of affairs of Muslims, not just in the ‘heartlands’ (though no doubt Sayyid would find this term problematic!). This volume requires slow and careful reading, especially for those not altogether familiar with current strands of thought within [End Page 251] Critical Muslim Studies, in order to understand what kind of project he mobilises that spans more than just the craft of state-building, though in a way his earlier chapters talk about the aforementioned meta-narratives that dominate a top-down perspective of transformation. Perhaps what is most appealing about this book is the author’s moral seriousness; in his articulation of what might be required to further decolonise the minds (and lands) of many Muslims who themselves are caught up in imposed narratives which force their historical trajectories in destructive directions, Sayyid does not forget that the end goal is autonomy for Muslims going beyond the shallow cheerleading seen when the ‘Arab Spring’ began to unfold and when pundits and think-tank officials effectively projected the end of history in the Middle East. Imraan Sumar London, UK The Emergence of Modern Shi͑ism: Islamic Reform in Iraq and Iran, by Zackery M. Heern, 2015. London: Oneworld, xv + 220 pp., £20.00. isbn: 978-1-78074-496-4. Why did the Usuli branch of Twelver Shi͑ism – once maligned – rise to prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become the dominant approach in Twelver Shi͑ism today? The author answers this question on a global scale, situating Usulism in the context of rationalistic and culturally unrelated trends such as neo-Confucianism and the Enlightenment, and suggests that the adoption of a rationalist religious school in Shi͑ism was a manifestation of a broader response to social, economic, political, and technological changes throughout the world (although he is careful to emphasize that the roots of the Usuli approach trace back to earlier centuries). In doing so, he challenges European hegemonic discourse which views modernity as a European phenomenon that spread to the rest of the world, and instead postulates neo-Usulism as a Shi͑i form of modernity that developed in a world in which multiple modernities have prevailed Rather than treating this era as...

Attitude of Muslim Consumers Toward Sex Appeal in Advertising: A Comparative Study Between Subcultures in Malaysia

This research was designed in order to explore the subculture differences in Malaysian consumers’ responses to sex appeal advertising. This study employs a 2 × 2 × 2 full factorial between subjects design. There are two levels of model gender (male/female), two levels of sex appeal (high/low), and two levels of religion of the subjects (Muslim/non-Muslim). When comparing Muslims and non-Muslims in the responses to the ads, it was generally found that Muslim subjects’ attitudes were significantly lower than non-Muslims attitudes toward the same ads. Future research should adopt a more representative sample and test different product categories.

Scepticism and Uncontested History: A Review Article

This article critically reviews the recent film and literary contributions of Tom Holland to the field of Islamic history. In the Shadow of the Sword chiefly narrates the history of the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires in vivid prose and through contemporaneous sources. However, the text falters in its narrative of the rise of Islamic civilisation by failing to incorporate recent methodological advancements in the field of Islamic history. Holland’s film, Islam: The Untold Story , similarly ignores research that has confirmed the early stabilisation of the text of the Qur’an as well as seventh-century Muslim and non-Muslim sources that discuss the early community. This article argues that the collective memory of mutually antagonistic sub-communities may also provide information about important public events in history. Methodologies that ignore Muslim literature to understand Islamic history are characterised as affirming early Orientalist assumptions that their Muslim subjects were culturally and intellectually impoverished. Theories that portray the Prophet Muhammad as incapable of independently producing the Qur’an in Mecca are dismissed as implausible in light of the collective memory of rival Muslim informants and conceptions of the sacred.

“Formalism, Puritanicalism, Traditionalism: Approaches to Islamic Legal Reasoning in the 19th‐Century Russian Empire”

AbstractAs early as the 1730s, the Russian imperial state sought to incorporate its Muslim subjects into the tsarist bureauacracy, first by co‐opting Muslim legal scholars, and later, beginning in 1788, by placing the whole of the ulama under government control. This led to a marginalization of Islamic legal institutions and a transformation of Islamic legal practice under Russian rule.In the early 19th century, ulama sought ways to adapt Islamic law to these institutional changes, and vibrant debates about the purpose and function of legal theory represented an important part of the religious discourse among these Muslim communities. This paper addresses the approaches of three scholars, Abu Nasr Qursawi (1776–1812), ῾Abd al‐Rahim Utiz‐Imani (1754–1834) and Fath Allah Uriwi (1767–1843), who strongly disagreed regarding issues such as the use of usul and furu῾, the permissibility of ijtihad, and the relationship between the ulama and the community.I argue that while each scholar puts forward a different approach to the law — which I term, respectively, formalism, puritanicalism and traditionalism — each of these positions represents a response to their communities' shifting circumstances under Russian rule and a way for the discursive tradition of Islamic law to continue despite the marginalization of legal institutions.

Ayub Khan and Modern Islam: Transforming Citizens and the Nation in Pakistan

Pakistan is viewed today as a haven for fundamentalist Islamists. This essay probes the genealogy of Pakistan's Islamisation by focusing on the rule of President Ayub Khan (1958–69) and extends to the war of 1971 and the dismembering of Pakistan during Yahya Khan's presidency. I trace Ayub Khan's project of ‘modernising Islam and the nation’ by probing three sites: the transformation of the Pakistani military into a jihadic army; the re-writing of history to craft an Islamic identity; and the reformation of East Pakistani Bengalis to make them ‘good Muslim subjects’. Ayub Khan's experiment was a failure, leading to the violent dismembering of the country in 1971, yet an ethical imaginaire of renewing the commitment to creating a humanistic moral community continues to be an ongoing quest in Pakistan, as reflected in my investigations of the oral testimonies of war veterans. Fulfilling these ethical concerns requires critical evaluation of the roots of Islamisation in Pakistan, beginning from the period of Ayub Khan's presidency.

Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: into the new millennium

Introduction: Power and Knowledge in the Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa Sherine Hafez and Susan Slyomovics Part I. Knowledge Production in Middle East and North Africa Anthropology 1. State of the State of the Art Studies: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa Susan Slyomovics 2. Identity and Difference in the Middle East and North Africa: A Review Essay Seteney Shami and Nefissa Naguib 3. Anthropology's Middle Eastern Prehistory: An Archaeology of Knowledge Jon W. Anderson 4. The Pragmatics and Politics of Anthropological Collaboration on the North African Frontier Paul A. Silverstein 5. Post-Cold War Politics of Middle East Anthropology: Insights from a Transitional Generation Confronting the War on Terror Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar Part II. Subjectivities: Youth, Gender, Family and Tribe in the Middle East and North African Nation-State 6. Anthropology of the Future: Arab Youth and the State of the State Suad Joseph 7. The Memory Work of Anthropologists: Gendered Studies of Conflicts and the Heroic Life in Middle East and North Africa Sondra Hale 8. Rejecting Authenticity in the Desert Landscapes of the Modern Middle East: Development Processes in the Jiddat il-Harasiis, Oman Dawn Chatty 9. Notable Families and Capitalist Parasites in Egypt's Former Free Zone: Law, Trade, and Uncertainty Christine Hegel-Cantarella Part III: Anthropology of Religion and Secularism in the Middle East and North Africa 10. Will the Rational Religious Subject Please Stand Up? Muslim Subjects and the Analytics of Religion Sherine Hafez 11. Defining and Enforcing Islam in Secular Turkey Kim Shively 12. Sharia in Diaspora: Displacement, Exclusion and Anthropology of the Displaced Middle East Susanne Dahlgren 13. A Place to Belong: Colonial Pasts, Modern Discourses, and Contraceptive Practices in Morocco Cortney L. Hughes Part IV: Anthropology and New Media in the Virtual Middle East and North Africa 14. Our Master's Call: Mass Media and the People in Morocco's 1975 Green March Emilio Spadola 15. The Construction of Virtual Identities: On-line Tribalism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond Sebastian Maisel 16. Youth, Peace, and New Media in the Middle East Charlotte Karagueuzian and Pamela Chrabieh Badine References Contributors Index

Islamic education and colonial secularism: the Amroha experiment of 1895–96

In September 1895, a boldly innovative trial was begun with the teaching of Islam in a British government school in the town of Amroha, near Delhi. This article returns to the Amroha experiment to consider what it reveals about Indian Muslim exchanges with European administrators on the subject of secular colonial education and, more broadly, to bring under scrutiny the historical engagement of Muslim parties with colonial secularism. By the final decade of the nineteenth century, European officials had joined a number of their Muslim subjects in rejecting the imparting of exclusively secular education in schools and colleges under the management of the colonial state. Arguing for the reconciliation of religious and secular instruction, Viqar-ul-Mulk and his contemporaries capitalized upon growing British anxieties about the moral deficiency of Indian students taught in state educational institutions, exposing colonial concerns over the likelihood of inculcating moral improvement in the absence of religious teaching. Challenging the official separation of religion and pedagogy, they raised the possibility of the accommodation of multiple faiths within the modern Indian nation and state. The Amroha experiment served as a precedent for elite Muslim attempts to found an Indian Muslim university in which Islamic instruction would be imparted. Viqar-ul-Mulk’s successful negotiations with the government inspired further efforts for the revitalization of religious education on the part of Muslim leaders concerned about the survival and strengthening of Islam under colonial rule.

Muslims and the Mainstream in Australia: Polarisation or Engagement?

Most studies of relationships encompassing Muslim minorities and Western societies examine Muslim and non-Muslim orientations separately. Here we investigate the patterns of similarity and difference involving Muslims and non-Muslims in Australia in terms of how they conceptualise the situation of Muslims in a secular society. We deploy Q methodology to study selected Muslims and non-Muslims in the same terms. Our results reveal three substantial positions. The first, ‘Assertive Islamic Belonging’, is mostly (but not exclusively) found among our Muslim subjects. The second, ‘Exasperated Monoculturalism’, is mostly (again not exclusively) associated with non-Muslims. The third, ‘Reciprocal Engagement’, has considerable presence in both sorts of communities. These results shed new light on the content of polarisation stressed in previous studies. They can also be deployed in the interests of productive dialogue across undeniable difference. The ‘Reciprocal Engagement’ position can act as a kind of discursive bridge, and the content of the two more polarised positions shows neither is beyond the reach of dialogue. We explore implications for dialogue across difference in a democracy and show how our findings can inform a deliberative democratic approach to multiculturalism.

The dark side of leadership: An experiment on religious heterogeneity and cooperation in India

We investigate voluntary contribution to public goods in culturally heterogeneous groups with a laboratory experiment conducted among 432 Hindu and Muslim subjects in India. With our specification of ‘Leading by example’ we test for an interaction effect between leadership and religious heterogeneity in a high stake environment. While cultural diversity does not affect contributions in the standard linear Public Goods Game, it reduces cooperation in the presence of a leader. Furthermore, we show that preferences for conditional cooperation are only prevalent in pure groups. In mixed groups, poor leadership and uncertainty about followers’ reciprocity hinders the functionality of leadership as an institutional device to resolve social dilemmas.