Can Appeals to Religious Values Mitigate Anti-Refugee Sentiment? Experimental Evidence From Lebanon

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241263072
• Author: Sam Selsky
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1164–1180

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241263072

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Can Appeals to Religious Values Mitigate

Anti-Refugee Sentiment? Experimental

Evidence From Lebanon

Sam Selsky

1



Abstract

This paper examines whether—and if so, to what extent—religious scripture and values can promote inclusionary

attitudes towards refugees. Sacred texts across faiths call on believers to embraceforeigners, suggesting that religious

discourses can be harnessed to promote refugees’inclusion in host societies. To test this possibility,Iimplement a surve y

experiment in which citizens of Lebanon—a religiously diverse country that has received the most Syrian refugees per

capita globally—are exposed to various forms of pro-refugee religious messaging. I f‌ind thatinclusionary religious

messaging can shift refugee-related attitudes towards tolerance, particularly for members ofsectarian communities with

the highest baseline anti-refugee animosity. The study’sf‌indings have important implications for understanding religion’s

consequences for both the dynamics of refugee integration and intercommunal relations more generally, especially in the

Middle East and North Africa and the broader developing world.

Keywords

refugees, religion, attitudes, Lebanon, Middle East

Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels

to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. –

Exodus 23:9

If any one of the polytheists seeks your protection, then grant

him protection so that he may hear the words of God. Then

deliver him to his place of safety. –Surat At-Tawbah 9:6

Introduction

Can appeals to religious values lead people to empa-

thize with refugees who have settled in their commu-

nities? On one hand, recent research has highlighted an

ambiguous relationship between individuals’religious

faith and tolerance of immigrants (McDaniel,

Nooruddin, and Shortle 2022;Shady 2022). Yet,

across many of the world’s major faiths, sacred texts

call on believers to embrace foreigners f‌leeing perse-

cution. This raises the question of whether invoking

religious values can help mitigate host country citizens’

xenophobic sentiment and promote refugees’inclusion

in their host society.

Understanding the complex role of religion in

shaping migration-related attitudes is particularly im-

portant in countries of the developing world, where

disproportionately large numbers of refugees have

settled and where religiosity remains high even as the

centrality of organized religion has dissipated in many

Western nations. Figure 1 displays the relationship

between citizen religiosity (from 2009 Pew polling) and

the number of refugees as a percent of the total pop-

ulation (via UNCHR) in every country globally, with

countries whose refugee populations represent greater

than 1 percent of the total population highlighted in

black. The two graphs—the second of which includes

the extreme outliers of Lebanon, Gaza and the West

Bank, and Jordan—underscore that the countries

hosting the largest numbers of refugees also tend to be

among the most devout.

In this paper, I test the capacity of religious dis-

courses to serve as a tool for mitigating anti-refugee

resentment through an experiment in Lebanon, a

Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Sam Selsky, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin,

158 W 21st ST STOP A1800 Austin, TX 78712, USA.

Email: sam.selsky@austin.utexas.edu

religiously diverse country that has received the most

Syrian refugees per capita globally. I employ a survey

experiment in which Lebanese citizens from varied

religious backgrounds are exposed to faith-based ar-

guments for tolerance towards refugees. These mes-

sagesarepresentedeitherontheirownorlinkedtoa

specif‌ic religious leader, in order to determine which—

if any—is capable of fueling inclusionary attitudes:

religious messages, the religious authority f‌igures who

tend to employ them, or the interaction of the two.

In line with pre-registered hypotheses, I f‌ind that in-

clusionary religious messages can shift refugee-related

attitudes towards tolerance, and that this is especially the

case for members of ethno-religious communities with

higher baseline animosity towards refugees. Moreover,

my results indicate that both faith-based messaging and

religious leader endorsements can independently induce

attitudinal change, echoing recent work that has aimed to

disentangle the effects of political messaging from those

of their messenger (Afrouzi, Arteaga, and Weisburst

2023).

This paper’sf‌indings have profound implications for

understanding and improving host-migrant relations, es-

pecially in the developing world. While scholars of

comparative migration politics have convincingly shown

that xenophobia is largely rooted in individuals’anxieties

about the supposed threat that migrants pose to their

country’s cultural fabric, this research corpus has been far

less successful in identifying interventions capable of

mitigating this cultural threat. My results suggest that a

fundamental element of host society culture itself—

religious faith, and the values within it—can be

mobilized to reframe citizens’perceptions of the for-

eigners who have settled in their communities.

This paper also builds on recent efforts in the religion

and politics literature to disentangle different elements

of religion and determine when and how faith shapes

political behavior and attitudes. In a growing body of

experimental work, researchers present individuals

with religious scripture, either on its own (Masoud,

Jamal, and Nugent 2016;McClendon and Riedl 2019)

or linked to a specif‌ic religious leader (Blair et al. 2021;

Condra, Isaqzadeh, and Linardi 2019), but how

scripture and authority—two crucial elements of reli-

gious experience—together and individually inf‌luence

people’s political commitments remains obscure. This

study’s factorial experimental design, in which survey

respondents are presented with scripture and authority

both on their own and bundled together, addresses this

gap and helps develop a deeper understanding of re-

ligion’s consequences for individual-level political

behavior.

Religion and Attitudes Towards Refugees

In response to recent waves of mass migration, researchers

have sought to explain the determinants of individuals’

attitudes towards immigrants and immigration-related

policies. This literature has identif‌ied various sources of

anti-migrant sentiment, including perceptions of the

economic threat that migrants pose (Dancygier 2010;

Scheve and Slaughter 2001) and anxieties over conf‌lict

between different cultures and value systems (Alrababa’h

et al. 2021;Adida, Lo, and Platas 2019;Bansak,

Figure 1.Religiosity and global refugee populations (without/with Lebanon and two other outliers).

Selsky 1165