Keywords: Political behavior, participation and culture

This paper seeks to investigate Muslim support for religious governance in Arab Muslim-Majority countries, focusing on the role of religiosity. It does so by exploring the relevant literature and deriving hypotheses from it, which are subsequently tested by using survey data of the Arab Barometer (Wave III and IV). More specifically, the paper investigates the relationship between religiosity, patriarchal values and liberal interpretations of Islam. It is proposed that religiosity plays a role in the support for religious governance, however this hypothesis borders on a tautology as it suggests that religious people support religious governance just because they are religious. Therefore a closer look at the interaction of differing interpretations of Islam and patriarchal values with religiosity is warranted, which could moderate the effect of religiosity on the support for religious governance.

The following analysis comprises over 14.000 respondents in twelve Arab Muslim-Majority countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, Palestinian territories, Tunisia, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen and Iraq) and conducts multilevel regression with the dependent variable ideological support for religious governance (Islamism). The analysis finds that religiosity indeed plays a major role in explaining support for religious governance, however this effect depends substantially on an individual’s interpretation of their religion as well as the tendency to endorse patriarchal values.

The findings of the analysis suggest that further studies in the field should account for the multidimensional impact of religiosity and avoid essentialist explanations that inextricably link Muslim religiosity to the support for religious governance.