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American Muslim Political Participation: Between Diversity and Cohesion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2019

Youssef Chouhoud Open the ORCID record for Youssef Chouhoud [Opens in a new window] ,
Karam Dana  and
Matt Barreto
Youssef Chouhoud*
Affiliation:
Christopher Newport University
Karam Dana
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Matt Barreto
Affiliation:
University of California
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Youssef Chouhoud, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA. E-mail: youssef.chouhoud@cnu.edu
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Abstract

American Muslims’ increased societal salience has led to greater scrutiny of their political and social attitudes. Yet, systematic analyses of this population remain rare and tend to aggregate findings at a level that masks the community's diverse backgrounds and experiences. As a partial corrective, our paper provides a comprehensive demographic analysis of American Muslim political participation. Our conclusions, first, complement previous efforts to elaborate the influence of minority status on the core determinants of political participation. Second, they highlight the differential impact of these determinants within key American Muslim demographic subgroups, revealing the moderating effects of denomination, racial or ethnic background, and gender. As scholars and practitioners seek to better understand Muslims in America, our research suggests that there are myriad circumstances when this community's presumed cohesion gives way to meaningfully diverse perspectives and behaviors.

Type
Symposium: Dialogue on Muslim American Sociopolitical Life
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 736 - 765
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2019 

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Footnotes

We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments have greatly improved this manuscript.

References

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