Author: Alexander Yendell and Stefan Huber
Affiliation: Leipzig University, Institut für Empirische Religions forschung, Universität Bern, Switzerland
Organization/Publisher: MDPI Open Access Journals
Date/Place: March 14, 2020/ Switzerland
Type of Literature: Article
Word Count: 9525
Link: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/3/129/htm
Keywords: Switzerland, Religiosity, prejudices, Islamophobia, Islam
Brief:
According to a study in 2013, half of Switzerland’s population believes that religious plurality is a source of conflict and only one third believe that “Islam fits into the Western world.” The secularized relationship of the state with religion, which is accompanied by a fear of Islam, further fosters Islamophobia in the country. Examples for the negative perception of Islam can be seen in the ban on minarets in 2009, the requests of far-right politicians not to recognize Islam, and other demands to limit religious practices of Muslims. In the light of the above mentioned, the authors claim that research on Islamophobia in Switzerland is “still in its infancy.” In their study, Yendell and Huber were especially interested in the importance of individual religiosity in relation to Islamophobia and analyzed data from an online survey conducted in Switzerland on “Xenosophia and Xenophobia in and between Abrahamic religions.” By applying the method of a multivariate analysis, they concluded that besides social dominance orientation, political position, and right-wing authoritarian attitudes, religious explanations also play an important role in the study of Islamophobia in Switzerland. Regarding the latter factor, the findings revealed that the greater the role of religion is for an individual, as long as this view is not accompanied by a fundamentalist religious orientation, the more it is likely that the individual has a positive view of Islam. This view, as the authors’ state, is obtained through the acceptance of religious values, which leads to tolerance. The authors propose that future studies on Islamophobia utilize measures for religiosity, including the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS).
By: Dilek Yücel-Kamadan, CIGA Research Associate
