Extremist violence, discrimination, and Muslim religious identification

Muslims’ strong religious identity remains a significant topic of public debate in Western European democracies and a puzzle for academic research. Relying on a survey experiment embedded in the one of the largest surveys of the German Turkish community to date, we study how Muslim immigrants adjust their social identity in response to discrimination and both anti-Muslim and Islamist violence. Our results suggest that when viewed in isolation and counter to the dominant explanation in the literature, neither discrimination nor anti-Muslim violence increases Muslims' religious identification. Instead, our results suggest a negative effect of Islamist violence on Muslim religious identification. This effect disappears once individuals are primed with discrimination or anti-Muslim violence. Conversely, anti-Muslim violence and discrimination increase religious identification if individuals are primed with Islamist violence. These results have important implications for our understanding of Muslims' religious identity, discrimination, and extremist violence.