Scriptural legitimation and the mobilisation of support for religious violence: experimental evidence across three religions and seven countries

Koopmans, Ruud; Kanol, Eylem; Stolle, Dietlind Article — Published Version Scriptural legitimation and the mobilisation of support for religious violence: experimental evidence across three religions and seven countries Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Koopmans, Ruud; Kanol, Eylem; Stolle, Dietlind (2021) : Scriptural legitimation and the mobilisation of support for religious violence: experimental evidence across three religions and seven countries, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, ISSN 1469-9451, Taylor & Francis, London, Vol. 47, Iss. 7, pp. 1498-1516, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1822158 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228486 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Scriptural legitimation and the mobilisation of support for religious violence: experimental evidence across three religions and seven countries Ruud Koopmans a† , Eylem Kanol a† and Dietlind Stolle b† a Research Area Migration & Diversity, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany; b Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, McGill University, Montreal, Canada ABSTRACT In their attempts to mobilise supporters and justify their actions, violent religious extremists often refer to parts of scripture that legitimize violence against supposed enemies of the faith. Accounts of religious extremism are divided on whether such references to scripture have genuine motivating and mobilising power. We investigate whether references to legitimations of violence in religious scripture can raise support for religious violence by implementing a survey experiment among 8,000 Christian, Muslim and Jewish believers in seven countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa. We find that priming individuals with isomorphic pro-violence quotes from Bible, Torah or Quran raises attitudinal support for religious violence significantly. Effect sizes are particularly large among those with a fundamentalist conception of their religion. Our results show that religious scripture can be effectively used to mobilise support for violence. The findings thus mark a counterpoint to theoretical arguments that question the causal role of religion and have important implications for deradicalization policies. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 23 December 2019 Accepted 7 September 2020 KEYWORDS Religious fundamentalism; violence; Islam; Christianity; Judaism Introduction The number of casualties of terrorism worldwide has increased sharply, reaching almost 200,000 deaths over the ten-year period 2007–2016. In contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, when ethnic and left-revolutionary groups predominated, global terrorism more recently has become dominated by groups acting in the name of religion. 1 Most of the deadliest recent terror groups fall in the category of Islamic religious extremism, most importantly the Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and Boko Haram in Nigeria and surrounding countries. Attacks by Christian extremist groups like the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army and the Anti-Balaka groups in the Central African Republic have also resulted in many casualties. Many of the deadliest recent terror attacks in the immigration contexts of the United © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Ruud Koopmans [email protected]u † The authors contributed equally to this work Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1822158 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 2021, VOL. 47, NO. 7, 1498–1516 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1822158 States and Western Europe over the last two decades have likewise been committed in thenameofreligion.Inadditiontothese terror attacks in Western immigration countries, thousands of young people have travelled to Syria, Iraq and in smaller numbers to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya and Somalia to join Islamist terror groups whose declared aim is to fight on behalf of their religion against supposed enemies of the faith. But what is religious about religiously motivated violence? This seemingly simple question is both hotly contested, and of crucial importance to design effective counter-strategies. What is not in doubt is that religious extremists claim that they draw inspiration from scriptural sources and that they frequently quote from religious scripture in their attempts to mobilise supporters. In his trial statement, the Jewish religious extremist Yigal Amir, the murderer of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, said that he had drawn inspiration from the Biblical precedent of Jael, who killed the Philistine warlord Sisera (Peri 2000). The symbol of the priest Phineas, who killed to prevent immoral acts, was invoked on numerous occasions by American terrorists to sanction attacks against abortion clinics or FBI buildings (Pratt 2010). In Al Qaida’s‘Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places’,issuedin August 1996, Osama Bin Laden cites Islamic scripture numerous times, for instance, this verse from the Quran: ‘But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seise them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)’[Al Tawbah: 5]. 2 These are not isolated examples. Among a collection of 2,000 texts written by Islamic extremists to legitimize attacks or to mobilise supporters, about three quarters refer to parts of scripture that condone or prescribe violence (Halverson, Furlow, and Corman 2012). Whether such references to scripture by prominent religious extremists can actually motivate support for violence among broader target populations or not is open to academicandpoliticaldebate(seeDawson2018,2019).However,thefactthatleadersand recruiters of extremist movements make frequent use of references to religious scripture in their attempts to rally support demonstrates that they believe in the mobilising power of scripture. To investigate whether this belief is justified, we implemented a survey experiment among 8,000 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish respondents in seven countries situated across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa –namely the United States, Germany, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Kenya. This set of countries offers a broad basis for generalisations about the capacity of references to religious scripture to mobilise support for religious violence, not just because of its broad geographical scope, but also because it covers countries where the various religious groups are in a minority or majority position, as well as where they derive from migration or are of native origin. Our study is moreover the first to explore the causal role of violence legitimations in religious scripture on attitudes towards religious violence in a comparative perspective across the three Abrahamic religions. Our findings show that priming individuals with isomorphic pro-violence quotes from the Bible, Torah, or the Quran raises attitudinal support for religious violence significantly across all three religious groups and in widely varying country settings. Effect sizes are particularly large among Muslims in our sample, and among those with a fundamentalist, literalist conception of their religion. JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1499 Theory and research questions A variety of scholars are skeptical about the notion that religious motivations or ideology play a causal role in explaining religious violence. Rather, they point to economic grievances (e.g. Gurr 2006; Mousseau 2011; Piazza 2011), political marginalisation (e.g. Pargeter 2009; Della Porta 2013), overlapping social identities (e.g. Basedau, Vüllers, and Körner 2013), or psychological trauma (e.g. Speckhard and Ahkmedova 2006) as salient determinants. The declared religious motivations of terrorists have been questioned as a legitimising cover for other power or profit-driven purposes (e.g. Stern 2003).As Dawson (2019, 80) has noted, ‘the entire discussion of religious terrorism is permeated by a subtle yet significant conceptual bias against accepting religion as a sui generis source of motivation, born perhaps of the secular backgrounds and training of most terrorism scholars’. Indeed, sociologists of religion have been more willing to consider religious ideology, especially in its fundamentalist guise, as a prime motivational force. Bruce (2000) argues that references to religious scripture should not be dismissed and that the prioritisation of religious identity indeed drives individuals to commit violence (similarly Juergensmeyer 2007). This debate about the relevance of religion as a motivational force has been difficult to resolve with observational data from biographical interviews and cross-sectional surveys because of the inherent difficulty of distinguishing true motivations from (post-hoc) justifications (Dawson 2019, 78). Experimental evidence would allow more confident causal conclusions. Bushman et al. (2007) have shown that individuals in Christian societies exposed to God-sanctioned biblical accounts of violence are more likely to display aggressive behaviour, especially if they believe in God. Apart from the latter study, which was conducted with students only, we are not aware of any other research that has experimentally investigated the impact of exposure to scriptural content on violence support. The holy books of all three monotheistic religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – contain various verses that legitimate violence against individuals who commit acts against the true faith.These verses ostracise atheists, apostates, and adulterers, to name but a few. By confronting believers in a controlled experimental design with such violence-legitimising verses, we investigate whether they have the potential to raise levels of support for religious violence, as extremist recruiters apparently believe they do. Inaddition we ask whether adherents of the three Abrahamicreligions react similarly when encountering calls toviolencebased on scripture, and whether the mobilising power of scriptural violence legitimations differs across types of believers. To this latter end, we investigate three moderator variables that tap into different aspects of religiosity: observance, knowledge, and fundamentalism. In line with the idea that violence is contrary to the true nature of religion, some have claimed that perpetrators and supporters of violence are found primarily among those who are less religiously observant and less knowledgeable about the content of scripture. Religiously observant and knowledgeable individuals may be able to counterbalance scriptural legitimations of violence with knowledge of other parts of religious practice or scripture that instruct believers toward tolerance and peacefulness (e.g. Wiktorowicz 2005;Neo et al. 2017). However, susceptibility to extremist mobilisation might also be higher among those who are religiously observant and know more about their religious tradition, because to them religion is more salient and scripture more meaningful. Empirical evidence on this question is rare, mostly non-experimental, and inconclusive. In a study among 1500 R. KOOPMANS ET AL. Palestinians, Ginges, Hansen, and Norenzayan (2009) found a positive relationship between mosque attendance and support for suicide attacks, but no such relationship with the frequency of prayer. 3 Graeme et al. (2013) studied the role of knowledge of Islam –measured by factual questions about religious scripture and doctrine that have unambiguous answers, such as the percentage of income that Muslims are required to give as alms (zakat) –among Pakistani Muslims and found that more knowledge was associated, though not very strongly, with lower support for several Islamist terror groups. On the basis of in-depth interviews and long-term observation of IS-activists, Wood (2016) however shows that they often possess detailed knowledge of Quranic and other religious source texts, which they use to legitimize their apocalyptic version of Islamism. By studying the role of religious observance and knowledge in an experimental setting and across various religious groups and contexts, we aim to provide more systematic evidence on the question whether observant believers and those who know more about the content of scripture are more or less likely to be swayed by mobilisation attempts that refer to scriptural legitimations of violence. Alternatively, it might be not so much the degree but the type of religiosity –moderate or fundamentalist –that matters. Religious fundamentalist ideology has been widely held responsible for driving extremist violence, but empirical evidence on the matter is scarce. Previous research has mainly focused on Christian fundamentalism and has found it to be strongly associated with negative attitudes towards out-groups such as homosexuals (e.g. Laythe et al. 2002), adherents of other religions (e.g. Glock and Stark 1966; Altemeyer 2003), and racial and ethnic minorities (e.g. Eisinga, Konig, and Scheepers 1995). A smaller number of studies have also established the relationship between religious fundamentalism and outgroup hostility among Muslims (Hunsberger 1996; Hunsberger, Owusu, and Duck 1999; Koopmans 2015). However, while a connection between fundamentalist religiosity and support for religious violence is frequently posited in theoretical and descriptive studies of religious extremism, there is a lack of rigorous empirical investigations of this relationship (see Rogers et al. 2007). It seems plausible, however, that the hostile attitudes towards out-groups that are strongly associated with fundamentalism lower the barrier towards support for violence against proclaimed enemies of the faith. Moreover, one of the defining features of fundamentalism is a belief in the literal interpretation of scripture (Altemeyer and Hunsberger 1992, 118). We therefore expect religious fundamentalists to be particularly susceptible to mobilisation attempts by extremists who present them with scriptural instructions and legitimations for the use of violence. Another central finding from the literature on religious fundamentalism and out-group hostility highlights religious fundamentalism as the decisive aspect of religiosity that drives prejudice. Once fundamentalism is controlled, most studies among Christians find that religious observance or other measures of the degree of religiosity do not influence outgroup hostility (e.g. Kirkpatrick, Hood, and Hartz 1991; Altemeyer and Hunsberger 1992). A comparative study among Christians and Muslims found that for the latter the effect of religiosity on outgroup hostility does not disappear entirely after controlling for fundamentalism, although it is strongly reduced in size (Koopmans 2015, 49). Based on this discussion, we will test all three aspects of religiosity –religious observance, religious knowledge, and religious fundamentalism –simultaneously to investigate whether religious fundamentalism emerges as the primary driver of support for violence. JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1501 Data and experimental verification strategy To ascertain a high level of external validity, we used stratified telephone, face-to-face, and in one case an online survey on religion and society among over 8,000 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish respondents in seven countries. Religious groups that are a in minority position in a particular country (e.g. Muslims in Kenya or Jews in the United States) were oversampled. Table A1 in the Appendix shows respondent numbers by religious group and country. There are a total number of 3007 Christian, 1018 Jewish, and 4064 Muslim respondents in the sample. The sample sizes per country range from 843 respondents in Palestine to 1357 respondents in Cyprus. In Lebanon, we additionally used quotas to ensure that the sample adequately represented the various denominations within Islam (Shiite and Sunni) and Christianity (Maronite and Melkite Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant) in the country. Likewise, the Jewish sample in Israel is representative for the various strands within Israeli Judaism (secular, traditional, orthodox and ultra-orthodox). In all countries, gender and age quotas were enforced. All surveys were done nationwide, except in Kenya where this was not feasible and the sample is based on the two largest cities, Nairobi and Mombasa, as well as two rural regions, one predominantly Muslim (Malindi), another predominantly Christian (Nakuru). Religious group membership was determined based on the self-identification of the respondents by way of the question ‘To which religion do you belong?’. Respondents indicating no religious affiliation or, in very few cases, affiliation to another religion (e.g. Hinduism), were dropped from the analysis. The survey included questions about religious observance, fundamentalism, religious knowledge and socio-economic status. More information about the survey design can be found in the Online Appendix 2. At the end of the survey, respondents were randomly assigned to a treatment or a control condition (for balance checks, see Figure S1 in the Online Appendix 1). The treatment condition provided a legitimation for the use of lethal violence in the name of religion, which was based on two isomorphic scriptural verses found in the Bible and Torah book Deuteronomy (verse 17: 2–5) and in the Quran Surah 5, Al Mai’dah (verse 33). In the treatment condition, respondents were primed with the following true statement: According to the [Christian respondent: Bible Book Deuteronomy / Jewish respondent: Torah Book Deuteronomy / Muslim respondent: Quran, Surah 5, Al Ma’idah], those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God should be killed. In the control condition, individuals were not assigned any prime. Individuals in both the treatment and control conditions were then asked the following question: ‘What do you personally think? Should people who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God be killed?’The answer options, scored on a 5-point Likert-scale, ranged from ‘completely disagree’to ‘completely agree’. By comparing outcomes in treatment and control conditions, we test whether references to violence-legitimising scriptural sources increase target audience support for the use of violence against the null hypothesis that believers’attitudes towards violence remain unaffected by such attempts to mobilise support for violence. As an alternative to the no-prime control group, we considered a placebo group that received a prime referring to ‘some people’, which we included in the US study. The idea behind this placebo was that perhaps even a maximally neutral reference to some outside source of legitimation such as ‘some people’would already increase individuals’support for religious violence. If that were the case, an increase in violence support in the treatment 1502 R. KOOPMANS ET AL. condition would not be attributable to religious legitimation specifically but to the presence of any kind of outside legitimation. In this condition, respondents received the following question: ‘According to some people, those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God should be killed. What do you personally think? Should people who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God be killed?’Results of the US study indicated that this prime was not perceived as neutral and lowered rather than raised support for violence compared to both the no-prime and religious treatment conditions (see Online Appendix 1 Figure S2). That respondents lowered rather than increased their endorsement of violence when primed with violence support by ‘some people’suggests that they probably thought of people belonging to different religions or denominations than their own. We conclude from this that priming with another legitimising source or agent –even if formulated as neutrally as possible –cannot be considered as a control or placebo condition but rather constitutes a treatment in its own right. We did not use the ‘some people’treatment in the other country surveys and use the question without any priming as the control condition, which gives the level of support for violence in the absence of any legitimising prime. We measure religious observance by two practices that are central to all three Abrahamic religions: praying at least once a day and visiting a house of worship (church, mosque or synagogue) at least once a week. However, in Islam and Judaism visiting the mosque or synagogue is less central to observance for women. Therefore, we count covering the hair as an alternative form of observance for women who indicate that they do not regularly visit a mosque or synagogue. As a robustness test, we also operationalise religious observance in exactly the same way for men and women, without considering covering. The results have been included in the Online Appendix of the paper and do not deviate in substantively relevant ways from our main findings (see Online Appendix 1 Figure S3). Religious knowledge is measured by the number of correct answers to three pretested multiple-choice questions on the content of the Bible, Torah and Quran that have unambiguous correct answers. One of these, the name of the son that God instructed Abraham to sacrifice, is common to all three religions; the other two questions are religion-specific. For instance, we asked Christians what happened on Pentecost and Muslims where the Mi’raj (Mohammed’s ascent to heaven) took place (full question wordings and answer options can be found in the Appendix at the end of the paper). Finally, religious fundamentalism is operationalised by a scale (with a Cronbach’s alpha value of .80) composed of eight well-established items that include the literal and unalterable interpretation of scripture (‘There is only one correct interpretation of the [Bible/Qur’an/Torah] to which every [Christian/Muslim/Jew] should stick’), the superiority of one’s own faith (‘[Christianity/Islam/Judaism] is superior to other religions’), and the precedence of religious prescriptions over secular laws (‘The rules of the [Bible/Quran/Torah] are more important to me than the current laws of [survey country]’). Full wordings of all eight items can be found in the Appendix at the end of the paper (see Altemeyer and Hunsberger 1992; Brettfeld and Wetzels 2007; Roex, van Stiphout, and Tillie 2010; Koopmans 2015). It is important to note that the use of violence as a means to attain religious aims is not included in the definition of fundamentalism, nor in the items by which it is measured. Appendix A at the end of the paper gives the exact wording and answer options of all questions as well as summary statistics for the three religious moderator variables (see Online Appendix 2 for the exact wording and answer options of the questions regarding the control variables). For the multivariate analyses reported in Table 1 below JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1503 we additionally controlled for gender, age (in years), education (a 7-point scale based on the International Standard Classification of Education –ISCED), and income (measured across 16 income brackets in the US and across 7 income brackets in the other survey countries). Because different currencies and income levels were used in the different countries, we standardise income by country. Not all respondents wanted to share their income with us (18.6% of respondents) and therefore we also include a variable for missing income information in the multivariate regressions. Table A2 in the Appendix shows descriptive statistics for all variables used in the analysis. Because the status of scripture, and the levels and meaning of observance, religious knowledge and fundamentalism may differ across the three religious traditions, we report analyses both for the full sample, and for the three religious groups separately. Treatment main effects of scriptural violence legitimation We start by looking at the treatment main effect, overall and by religious group and country. Because the treatment was randomly assigned we can measure the treatment Table 1. Multivariate regression of violence support on treatment, religiosity, and control variables. Dependent variable: Support for violence Entire sample Christian Jewish Muslim (1) (2) (3) (4) Treatment 0.33*** 0.15*** 0.09 0.42*** (0.03) (0.04) (0.08) (0.05) Muslim (reference: Christian) 0.62*** (0.03) Jewish 0.07 (0.06) Religious observance −0.01 −0.03 −0.13* 0.08* (0.02) (0.03) (0.05) (0.04) Religious knowledge −0.07*** −0.06* −0.23*** −0.05 (0.02) (0.03) (0.05) (0.03) Religious fundamentalism 0.20*** 0.14*** 0.41*** 0.30*** (0.02) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) Religious observance × treatment 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.06 (0.03) (0.05) (0.08) (0.05) Religious knowledge × treatment 0.07** 0.02 0.13 0.10* (0.03) (0.04) (0.07) (0.04) Religious fundamentalism × treatment 0.17*** 0.09* 0.04 0.26*** (0.03) (0.04) (0.06) (0.06) Age −0.002* −0.005*** −0.002 −0.002 (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002) Male 0.02 −0.07 + −0.02 0.09* (0.03) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04) Education −0.06*** −0.07** 0.05 −0.08*** (0.01) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02) Income −0.03* −0.04 −0.05 −0.03 (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02) Income Missing 0.05 −0.05 −0.12 0.18** (0.04) (0.05) (0.07) (0.06) Country Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 7,263 2,770 959 3,534 Adjusted R 2 0.35 0.20 0.32 0.29 Notes: The table shows standardised coefficients from OLS regressions (with standard errors in parentheses) of the entire sample (column 1) and each included religious group (columns 2–4).The coefficients for observance, knowledge, fundamentalism, education and income are standardised. See Online Appendix 1 Table S1 for the full regression table including the country fixed effects coefficients; *p< .05; **p< .01; ***p< .001. 1504 R. KOOPMANS ET AL. effect simply by the difference between the treatment and control groups. The reported significance levels are therefore computed by way of OLS regressions without any control variables. In Figure 1, panel A, we plot the percentage of respondents who agreed or completely agreed (scores 4 and 5 on the five-point scale) that those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God should be killed, by religious group and treatment or control condition. The results demonstrate that there is a consistent and fairly strong effect of priming individuals with scriptural quotes on violence legitimisation. On average across all religious groups and countries, 18 percent of respondents supported the use of violence in the control condition, compared to 30 percent in the treatment condition with the scriptural prime (significant at p< .001, see Online Appendix 1 Table S2). The figure also reveals important differences across the three religious groups, both regarding baseline levels of support for violence in the control condition, and regarding the size of the treatment effect. Among Jews and Christians, baseline levels are low, at three and nine percent, respectively. For both groups, support for violence in the treatment condition is significantly higher (at p< .05) but the increase is modest in size, to seven and twelve percent, respectively. Among Muslims, baseline levels are higher (29 percent support for violence) and they increase strongly to 47 percent in the treatment condition (p< .001). Figure 1. Support for religious violence (in % of respondents) in control and treatment groups by religious group (panel A) and by religious group and country (panel B) (Error bars represent the standard error and the numbers above the bars indicate the level of violence support). JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1505 Ginges, J., I. Hansen, and A. Norenzayan. 2009.“Religion and Support for Suicide Attacks.” Psychological Science 20 (2): 224–230. Glock, C. Y., and R. Stark. 1966.Christian Beliefs and Anti-semitism. New York: Harper & Row. Graeme, B., C. C. Fair, N. Malhotra, and J. N. Shapiro. 2013.“Poverty and Support for Militant Politics: Evidence from Pakistan.”American Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 30–48. Gurr, T. R. 2006.“Economic Factors.”In The Roots of Terrorism, edited by L. Richardson, 85–101. New York: Routledge. Halverson, J. R., R. B. Furlow, and S. R. Corman. 2012.“How Islamist Extremists Quote the Qur’an.”Arizona State University Center for Strategic Communication. 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Speckhard, A., and K. Ahkmedova. 2006.“The Making of a Martyr: Chechen Suicide Terrorism.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29 (5): 429–492. Stern, J. 2003.Terror in the Name of God. New York: Ecco. Wiktorowicz, Q. 2005.“A Genealogy of Radical Islam.”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28 (2): 75–97. Wilson, T. 2017.“Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK.”In Centre for the Response to Radicalization and Terrorism Research Paper nr. 9. London: Henry Jackson Society. Wood, G. 2016.The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State. München: Random House. 1512 R. KOOPMANS ET AL. Appendix A Sample and key questionnaire items Table A1. Sample distribution across countries and religious groups. Cyprus Germany Israel Kenya Lebanon Palestine USA Total Christian 684 765 64 600 491 32 371 3007 (8.5%) (9.5%) (0.8%) (7.4%) (6.1%) (0.4%) (4.6%) (37.2%) Jewish 0 0 805 0 0 0 213 1018 (0%) (0%) (10.0%) (0%) (0%) (0%) (2.6%) (12.6%) Muslim 673 516 343 597 699 811 425 4064 (8.3%) (6.4%) (4.2%) (7.4%) (8.6%) (10.0%) (5.3%) (50.2%) Total 1357 1281 1212 1197 1190 843 1009 8089 (16.8%) (15.8%) (15.0%) (14.8%) (14.7%) (10.4%) (12.5%) (100%) Table A2. Descriptive statistics. N Min Max Missing Sample Mean Sample SD Christian Mean Christian SD Jewish Mean Jewish SD Muslim Mean Muslim SD Support for religious violence (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) 7703 1.0 5.0 386 2.3 1.4 1.8 1.1 1.6 0.9 2.8 1.5 Treatment: scriptural prime (0 = control groups, 1 = treatment group) 8089 0.0 1.0 - 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 Religious fundamentalism (mean agreement across 8 items on a 5-point Likert scale) 8078 1.0 5.0 11 3.1 0.9 2.9 0.9 2.4 1.0 3.4 0.7 Religious knowledge (number of correct answers) 7665 0.0 3.0 424 2.1 1.0 1.8 1.0 2.6 0.7 2.1 0.9 Religious observance (0 = no observance; 2 = both forms of observance) 8055 0.0 2.0 34 1.2 0.9 1.1 0.8 0.5 0.8 1.4 0.8 Age (in years) 8089 18.0 95.0 0 39.3 16.4 42.6 18.1 40.4 15.1 36.5 14.8 Male 8089 0.0 1.0 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 Education (0 = no education; 7 = Master degree) 8048 0.0 7.0 41 3.8 2.0 3.8 1.8 5.1 1.5 3.4 2.0 Income (across seven income categories; standardised by country) 8089 −2.1 5.2 0 −0.0 0.9 0.0 0.9 0.1 0.9 −0.0 0.9 Income missing 8089 0.0 1.0 1508 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.4 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1513 Question wordings and answer options for dependent and moderator variables Dependent variables: Support for religious violence. Control condition: What do you personally think? Should people who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God be killed? (1) Completely agree (2) Agree (3) Neither agree nor disagree (4) Disagree (5) Completely disagree Treatment condition: [for Christians and Jews:] According to the [Bible/Torah] Book Deuteronomy, those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God, should be killed [for Muslims:] According to the Quran, Surah 5, Al Ma’idah, those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of Allah, should be killed What do you personally think? Should people who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God be killed? (1) Completely agree (2) Agree (3) Neither agree nor disagree (4) Disagree (5) Completely disagree Moderator variables Religious observance. How often do you pray? (1) Several times a day (2) Daily (3) Weekly (4) Rarely (5) Never How often do you visit a religious service in a [Mosque / Church / Synagogue]? (1) Several times a day (2) Daily (3) Weekly (4) Rarely / on special occasions (5) Never [for Jewish and Muslim women who indicate they rarely or never visit a synagogue or mosque] Do you express your faith in your daily life in any of the following ways? –Covering your hair (1) Yes (2) No 1514 R. KOOPMANS ET AL. Religious knowledge. All respondents What was the name of the son that [Abraham / Ibrahim] offered as a sacrifice to God? (1) Isaac / Ismail / Ismāʿīl (2) Jacob / Yakub / Yaʿqūb (3) Jonas / Yunus / Yunus (4) Josef / Yusuf / Yousef Muslims What was the name of the uncle who raised Mohammed? (1) Abu Talib (2) Ali (3) Hussein (4) Abd Allāh Muslims Where did the Mi’raj take place? (1) Mecca (2) Medina (3) Al Quds (Jerusalem) (4) Damascus Christians What happened on Pentecost? (1) Jesus stood up from the grave (2) The disciples received the Holy Spirit (3) Jesus walked on water (4) The last supper Christians Who of the following was NOT one of the twelve Apostles? (1) Peter (2) Judas (3) Lukas (4) Simon Jews What was the name of Esther’s uncle from the Purim story? (1) Josef (2) Mordechai (3) Schlomo (4) Yacob Jews What was the name of Moses’brother, who was with him when he led the Jews out of Egypt? (1) Shimon (2) Yochanan (3) Aharon (4) Benyamin JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 1515 Religious fundamentalism. All items were measured using a five point Likert scale (1) Completely agree (2) Agree (3) Neither agree nor disagree (4) Disagree (5) Completely disagree The rules of the [Quran / Bible / Torah] are more important to me than the current laws of [survey country] [Islam / Christianity / Judaism] is superior to other religions What we are seeing in the world today is the final battle between [Islam / Christianity / Judaism] and the forces of evil There is only one correct interpretation of the [Quran / Bible / Torah] to which every [Muslim/ Christian/Jew] should stick Whenever science and the [Quran / Bible / Torah] conflict, science is probably right Those who do not strictly follow the rules prescribed in the [Quran / Bible / Torah] can no longer be called [Muslims / Christians / Jews] There is only one perfectly true religion It is more important to be a good person than to have the right religion 1516 R. KOOPMANS ET AL.