The Struggle for Inclusion

Muslim Minorities and the Democratic Ethos

Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, Paul M. Sniderman

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780226807416, 9780226807249
• eBook ISBN: 9780226807386
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The politics of inclusion is about more than hate, exclusion, and discrimination.  It is a window into the moral character of contemporary liberal democracies.  The Struggle for Inclusion introduces a new method to the study of public opinion: to probe, step by step, how far non-Muslim majorities are willing to be inclusive, where they draw the line, and why they draw it there and not elsewhere.  Those committed to liberal democratic values and their concerns are the focus, not those advocating exclusion and intolerance.
 
Notwithstanding the turbulence and violence of the last decade over issues of immigration and of Muslims in the West, the results of this study demonstrate that the largest number of citizens in contemporary liberal democracies are more open to inclusion of Muslims than has been recognized. Not less important, the book reveals limits on inclusion that follow from the friction between liberal democratic values.  This pioneering work thus brings to light both pathways to progress and polarization traps. 
 

[ Chapter One ]

Introduction

This book is about whether contemporary liberal democracies are capable of becoming more fully, more truly inclusive. Its focus is the readiness of non-Muslim majority citizens to include Muslim minorities.1 It is unlike what we, and most other scholars of the politics of cultural and religious diversity, have done before. The aim is not to investigate the sources or strength of majority group members’ desire to exclude a minority. It is, instead, to identify the conditions under which they are open to inclusion. The difference is not a play on words, not a gambit to substitute one word for another—inclusion for exclusion—in order to say the same thing but the other way around. It is a different undertaking. What are majority group citizens in established democracies willing to endorse, ready to ratify? Where do they draw the line? And why do they draw it there and not elsewhere?

We make three core claims. First, in today’s democracies in Western Europe and North America, there are terms on which inclusion of Muslims is widely acceptable. A path forward depends on knowing the difference between the terms that are acceptable and the terms that are not. Second, to see the difference, it is necessary to shift from concentrating on the intolerant, who favor and fight for exclusion, and turn a concentrated light on those who believe in tolerance, who favor the ideals of a liberal democratic society and, at least in principle, are open to inclusion. Third, and ironically, the risk of polarization traps in the struggle for inclusion follows, not from the strength of exclusionary forces, but from the friction between liberal democratic values.2

Tocqueville’s Premise

In Tocqueville’s account of democracy in America, three factors are fundamental: circumstances, laws, and les moeurs. Of the three, les moeurs—a society’s values, customs, ways of life—is the most crucial. Such is the premise of our study. The habits of the mind and the habits of the heart in contemporary liberal democracies, the broadly shared understanding of what a democracy calls for, are our farthest-reaching concern. “Broadly shared” is key. Left and right, progressives and conservatives, draw different political lessons from these ideals. We fix on what is common ground to the largest number in the mainstream left and right.

Tolerance is at the center of our account. Tolerance is only one of a family of democratic ideals and, until recently, did not bear centrally on the struggle for inclusion. Traditionally, tolerance has meant political tolerance—that is, a willingness to put up with, to tolerate, those you disagree with or dislike. We build on lines of research documenting the emergence of a larger understanding of tolerance:3 tolerance as affirmative and sympathetic to the prejudice that many minorities confront—inclusive tolerance we shall call it.4 An investigation of the beliefs and concerns of citizens whose outlook is open-minded and inclusive is the core of this inquiry.

About Tocqueville, James Schleifer writes in his landmark work The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, “It was in the majority’s moral authority that he placed the ultimate power of the many; and it was also in moral limits that he found the best barrier to the abuse of that power.”5 Drawing out what democratic ideals mean for inclusion requires asking what beliefs and what concerns those who affirm them have about inclusion. The ideals of liberal democracies are a primary force in favor of moral arguments for inclusion, but liberal democratic ideals are also the source of the weightiest—and least understood—moral limits on inclusion.

Exclusion and Demonization

Our focus is on those who believe in inclusive tolerance but not because we discount the force of intolerance. Intolerance, nativism, and political extremism unquestionably remain pressing concerns over a wide array of issues, among them, opposition to immigration and to policies to assist immigrants;6 prejudice toward immigrants in general and Muslims in particular;7 the clash of cultural values and group identities;8 or the surge of support for the far right and populism.9

Given this, it would simply be wrong not to begin by spotlighting the illiberal strains in today’s established democracies. What once—if said publicly—would have ended a politician’s career is now a way to make a political career. Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, is one of a company of established politicians who explicitly argue for exclusion of Muslim minorities and the cultural inferiority of Islam in Europe today: “I am proud to say that our culture . . . is not only better, far better, than what I see as a barbaric Islamic culture” and “#2017in3words No More Islam.”10 And outside the parliamentary and electoral arenas, anti-Islamic groups, websites, and social media networks spill over with appalling illustrations of non-Muslim citizens demonizing Muslims.11 The Muslim as potential terrorist, a threat to the safety of the country, is a recurring theme. Terror organizations where the leaders and followers identify as Muslims cultivate this notion, precisely because it fuels group conflict and can help enlarge the war of culture and religion that they want to fight.12 Far-right activists are thriving on what has been called “cumulative extremism—namely, the way in which one form of extremism can feed off and magnify other forms.”13

To know what hate sounds like, one must hear it; next best is to see it. Hence our presentations, word-for-word, of how some non-Muslims in established democracies regard Muslims. We begin with a showing of posters of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident / Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), a far-right, anti-Islamic activist group that started in Germany, and a sampling of abhorrent Facebook posts.

Our chief resource, though, is the online interviews we conducted with a randomly drawn sample of more than a thousand non-Muslim citizens. We asked them to tell us, in their own words, what comes to mind when they hear the word Muslim. Since the interviews were online, participants’ anonymity was guaranteed. They were free to say whatever they wanted without fear of presenting themselves in a socially undesirable light; free also to say what they thought without being confined to a choice from among answers predetermined by a researcher. The insults, the contempt, the hostility in the words of many are arresting. We present them, at length and in detail, for readers to see Islamophobia close-up.

But looking for one thing, we also saw another. The overwhelming number of majority group citizens do not see all Muslims as alike. They see differences between young Muslims and old Muslims; between Muslims who are new to their country and Muslims who have grown up in it; between religious Muslims and secular Muslims; between closed-minded and open-minded members of Muslim communities. Demonization and Islamophobia we expected. Differentiation we did not expect. It is humbling to consider that, for all the effort we have put into developing a different approach to the study of public opinion, the finding that may matter most to Muslims is the record of the words that we kept documenting that most non-Muslims see that Muslims, like non-Muslims, do not all follow the same practices, adhere to the same traditions, or share the same outlook on life.14

Inclusionary Options

Turning from a study of exclusion to inclusion changes the focus from those who are intolerant to those who believe in inclusive tolerance. In seeking to account for their concerns and beliefs, some limitations of the standard model of prejudice and politics come into view. The standard model fixes on deep-lying psychological dispositions—authoritarianism,15 social dominance orientation,16 or system justification17—as long-term drivers of intolerance, compounded by anxieties and animosities generated by intermittent external shocks, most often economic or political crises. To this psychological foundation, we propose to add a political framework spotlighting the pivotal role of inclusionary options.

The core insight is this: the intolerant will throw their weight against inclusion on any terms. All the play is with those who believe in inclusive tolerance. They will not be open to inclusion regardless of what is asked of them. Their openness will depend on the inclusionary options on the table and, more specifically, on the moral premises underpinning those options. They will support inclusion if what they are being asked to support is consistent with their understanding of what a liberal democratic society calls for; they will not support it if what they are being asked to support clashes with this understanding. Our objective is not to pronounce on the validity of their beliefs and judgments. It is to bring out what is and what is not acceptable in the name of inclusion to those who accept the normative premises of contemporary liberal democracies—those who are open to inclusive tolerance.

Respect

What should count as being inclusive? At the level of principle, there are two requirements. Respect for the culture of Muslims is one; acceptance of Muslims as a part of the common national identity is the other. Taken by itself, respect for difference tends to favor segregation. Taken by itself, incorporation into a national identity tends to favor assimilation. Inclusion requires both.

A necessary condition of an inclusive society, then, is acknowledgment of the worth of the culture and accomplishments of Muslim minorities. But what does this actually call for? Differences between non-Muslim majority communities and Muslim minority communities over whether women should have equal standing with men are real, not spurious. So, too, are differences over whether the common culture should have a religious temper or a secular one. It is all very well to say that the worth of minority cultures should be acknowledged in a liberal democracy. But what can it mean to say that a person who believes in gender equality and a secular society must acknowledge the worth of Muslim culture and traditions?

In fact, there are two different conceptions of what this may mean. One is that acknowledgment of the worth of Muslims and their faith requires that non-Muslim citizens must evaluate them as commendable, even, possibly, worthy of emulation. This is appraisal respect. It is natural and right that those who are part of the community that shares a set of ideals believe that others should see that they are praiseworthy and believe that the larger society should support and help sustain them. But for non-Muslims, including those who are most concerned about prejudice toward minorities, it does not follow that they have a duty to commend the culture and traditions of Muslims; still less that they should accept that the larger society has an obligation to help sustain them or be guilty of intolerance. What is called for is a readiness to appreciate that the ideas and ideals of others are entitled to be taken seriously; to accept that a majority has a responsibility to publicly and privately recognize the culture and traditions of minorities as important to them and therefore worthy of their respect. This is recognition respect.

The distinction between recognition respect and appraisal respect speaks to both the opportunities and traps of inclusion. The results of research on a number of fronts converge on a claim that the public in liberal democracies ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Demonization and Differentiation
• 3  Respect
• 4  Speech as a Mirror of Dignity
• 5  The Construction of National Identities
• 6  Taking Part: Images of Citizenship
• 7  Liberal Values and Muslim Communities
• 8  A New Framework for the Study of Inclusive Politics
• 9  Invitations
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Documentation of Survey Experiments by Figure
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Data Sources
• Index