Preaching Politics: How Politicization Undermines Religious Authority in the Middle East (With A.Kadir Yildirim, Sharan Grewal, and Mirjam Kuenkler).
British Journal of Political Science
A growing body of research demonstrates how political involvement by Christian religious leaders can undermine the religion’s social influence. Do these negative consequences of politicization also extend to Islam? Contrary to scholarly and popular accounts that describe Islam as inherently political, we argue that Muslim religious leaders who engage in politics will weaken their religious authority. We test this argument with a conjoint experiment implemented on a survey of more than 12,000 Sunni Muslim respondents in 11 Middle Eastern countries. The results show that adopting political positions or affiliating with politically-active religious movements decreases the perceived religious authority of Muslim clerics, including among respondents who approve of the clerics’ political positions. The article’s findings shed light on how Muslims in the Middle East understand the relationship between religion and politics, and they contribute more broadly to understanding of how political involvement by religious actors can have negative repercussions for religion.
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