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Mosque Involvement and Political Engagement in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2018

Aubrey Westfall
Aubrey Westfall*
Affiliation:
Wheaton College
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Aubrey Westfall. E-mail: westfall_aubrey@wheatoncollege.edu
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Abstract

Confronted by a number of home-grown Islamic terrorist attacks, many Americans incorrectly assume that Muslim religiosity correlates with anti-American values and that the American mosque is the center of radical socialization efforts. This paper examines the nature of the relationship between mosque involvement and political engagement. It finds that mosque attendance is positively associated with political engagement only when the attendance engages congregants in ways beyond religious ritual. Attending mosque to pray does not significantly impact political identities or engagement like following politics, registering to vote, voting, or party membership, while participation in other social or religious activities at a mosque is associated with an increased probability of engagement. These results suggest that not all mosque involvement is equally beneficial for promoting political engagement and that religious participation must proactively engage with the social lives of the congregants to have a substantive political effect.

Type
Symposium: Dialogue on Muslim American Sociopolitical Life
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 678 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

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