Multiculturalism and Muslim Accommodation

• Date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414015626448
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Comparative Political Studies

2017, Vol. 50(1) 102 –132

© The Author(s) 2016

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414015626448

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Article

Multiculturalism and

Muslim Accommodation:

Policy and Predisposition

Across Three Political

Contexts

Matthew Wright1, Richard Johnston2,

Jack Citrin3, and Stuart Soroka4

Abstract

This article assesses the apparent effect of political multiculturalism on

tolerance of Muslim accommodation among native-born majority members.

Our principle goal is in understanding how public opinion on religious

accommodation varies as a function of both federal multicultural policy, on

one hand, and more deeply rooted notions of political culture, on the other.

We do so by examining responses to a pair of survey experiments embedded

in surveys conducted in Canada and the United States. The experiments

allow us to convincingly demonstrate “Muslim exceptionalism.” Contextual

comparisons across multicultural policy regimes (Canada and the United

States) and within them but across distinct political cultures (Quebec vs.

English Canada) lend credence to a fairly subdued role for policy and a

much larger one for political culture. These effects are, we argue and show,

strongly moderated by support for multiculturalism at the individual-level.

1American University, Washington, DC, USA

2University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

3University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

4University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Matthew Wright, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington,

DC 20016, USA.

Email: mwright@american.edu

626448CPSXXX10.1177/0010414015626448Comparative Political StudiesWright et al.

research-article2016

Wright et al. 103

Keywords

migration, race, ethnicity and politics, political psychology, elections, public

opinion and voting behavior, multiculturalism

Cartoons mocking Mohammed, bans on public wearing of the burka, and

other restrictions on headgear, sharia law, and halal food at school lunches are

issues no Western democracy confronted 50 years ago. Although these issues

may seem more pointed in Europe than in North America, there are strong

trans-Atlantic parallels. Some, such as the controversy over the “Ground-

zero mosque,” are echoes of 9/11. But others are direct analogues to European

experiences, as with the controversies over sharia law in Ontario, religious

headgear in Quebec courtrooms and other public spaces, the prohibition of

face covering in Canadian citizenship ceremonies, and, in the United States,

court cases regarding the wearing of the hijab at work. They reflect diversity

and its discontents, thanks mainly to recent immigration bringing many new

ethnicities into a single polity.

Learning how to cope with burgeoning cultural heterogeneity has chal-

lenged regimes in North America and Europe, with the policy choices defined

by assimilation at one pole and multiculturalism at the other. Viewed both as

a theory of political identity and a derivative set of policies, multiculturalism

proposes to assure the continued survival and vitality of minority cultures

into the indefinite future (Taylor, 1994). Through official recognition and

respect, financial support, special rights, and exemptions from general laws

and customs, multiculturalism seeks to enable minority group members to

live an “authentic” life within their “societal culture” (Kymlicka, 1995, 2001;

Levy, 2000; Taylor, 1994). Proponents of these policies argue that they facili-

tate the integration of culturally diverse immigrants and help bind them to

their new country. Critics argue that entrenching cultural differences under-

mines national unity and social cohesion and that group-differentiated rights

are fundamentally incompatible with liberal principles of equal treatment of

individuals (Barry, 2002). They take particular aim at illiberal practices

regarding the treatment of women and freedom of speech (Gutmann, 2003;

Okin, 1999).

We do not enter this heated normative philosophical fray. Instead, we

probe the extent to which mass publics support the tolerance and possible

preservation of minority religious and cultural practices, even if they conflict

with liberal norms and values, and the individual as well as contextual bases

for these attitudes. With regard to political context, Banting and Kymlicka’s