Skip to main content
Fachgebiete
Automobil + Motoren Bauwesen + Immobilien Business IT + Informatik Elektrotechnik + Elektronik Energie + Nachhaltigkeit Finance + Banking Management + Führung Marketing + Vertrieb Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe Versicherung + Risiko
DE
EN
Bücher
Zeitschriften
Themenseiten
Organisationspsychologie Projektmanagement Marketing Smart Manufacturing
Weitere Formate
Podcasts Webinare Technik Webinare Wirtschaft Kongresse Veranstaltungskalender Awards
Jetzt Einzelzugang starten
Zugang für Unternehmen
Referenzkunden
SLX-Digitalkonferenz: Zukunftswerkstatt 2024

Mehr Umsatz mit Top-Kontakten

Am 7. Mai erfahren Sie, wie Vertriebsteams Leadgenerierung, Leadnurturing und Leadstrategien effizient steuern können.
Erweiterte Suche
Anmelden
nach oben
Public Choice
Erschienen in: Public Choice 3-4/2021

19.11.2019

Islamic constitutions and religious minorities

verfasst von: Moamen Gouda, Jerg Gutmann

Erschienen in: Public Choice | Ausgabe 3-4/2021

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config
loading …

Abstract

This study examines the effects of formal institutions, specifically constitutions that prescribe Sharia law as a source of legislation, on discrimination against religious minorities. We hypothesize that countries in which the supreme values of Islam are entrenched in the constitution exhibit more discrimination against religious minorities than otherwise comparable countries. In our empirical analysis, we find that religious minorities are indeed likely to face more religious discrimination under Islamic constitutions, even if the relevance of Islam in society is separately taken into account, for example, in terms of the Muslim population share. Instrumental variable regressions support our hypothesis of a causal effect of constitutional rules on de facto social outcomes. However, we find no evidence that Islam encourages discrimination against minorities when it is not entrenched in the constitution. Our results support the grave dangers inherent in the constitutionalization of supreme values.
Vorheriger Artikel Correction to: The transformation of supreme values: Evidence from Poland on salvation through civic engagement
Nächster Artikel Third-party intervention in the presence of supreme values

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren
Anhänge
Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich
Fußnoten
1
So far, only religious freedom and the constitutional separation of religion from the state have been studied (see Fox and Flores 2009). Such constitutional rules are very different from those analyzed herein.
 
2
We ask whether Islam is compatible with liberal values. Hitherto, research has focused on whether Islam is detrimental to democratic institutions (see, e.g., Potrafke 2012, 2013; Rowley and Smith 2009).
 
3
Descriptive statistics show that discrimination levels are lowest against Muslim minorities, followed by dhimmis (i.e., Christians and Jews), and highest for other minorities and apostates.
 
4
A similar argument is made by Powell (2013), who shows that only those Islamic law states that adopt Sharia law are less willing to subject themselves to the adjudication of the International Court of Justice.
 
5
The threat of punishment may lead to preference falsification by nonbelievers, as described by Kuran (1995).
 
6
One certainly can argue that, aside from ideological motives, political economy considerations may have played important roles, as constitutional rules reallocate political power to different interest groups in society. The entrenchment of Sharia as a (and later “the”) principal source of legislation in Egypt, for example, allocated additional power not only to the Islamist political movement, but also to the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, which made extensive use of its discretion in interpreting the compatibility of legislation with Islamic law (Lombardi 1998).
 
7
Sabians are a religious group mentioned in the Quran. Their identity and beliefs are not clear and remain debated in the literature of Islamic jurisprudence. Today, followers of Mandaeism, a monotheistic religion based largely in what was historically southwestern Mesopotamia, usually are identified as Sabians.
 
8
Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest and still active monotheistic religions. Recent estimates place the current number of Zoroastrians at around 190,000, with most living in India and Iran.
 
9
Specifically, dhimmi status granted full rights of inheritance and full powers of acquisition, sale, transfers, grants, and mortgages of land. Dhimmis were exempt from military service. Dhimmi indigents were supported financially by the zakat tax paid by Muslims (and not by dhimmis; see Kuran 2019). Dhimmi status offered the freedom to practice religion, including protection from desecration of holy sites, autonomy in the appointment of religious leaders, and freedom from pressure to convert to Islam.
 
10
Dhimmis could not testify in litigation involving Muslims, could not marry Muslim women, and were not allowed to hold political or judicial office outside their local communities. They were not allowed to carry arms, to walk in the middle of the street, to ride horses, to flaunt their religion publicly or to sell their religious books or artifacts in a marketplace, to raise their voices during worship, and to build churches or houses of higher elevations than those of Muslims. Moreover, dhimmis were obliged to wear distinctive clothing and hair styles, which differed from those of Muslims and to stand in the presence of Muslims. They were not allowed to convert Muslims to their religion or to prevent one of their own from converting to Islam (Brenner 2008, p. 71; An-Na'im 1996, pp. 88, 144).
 
11
The data are based on law or consistent governmental practice. When the two contradict, consistent government practice is coded. In other words, when a discriminatory law exists and is implemented, or when no such law exists and government practice also does not discriminate in the absence of a legal basis, de jure and de facto discrimination will be identical. When they are not identical, the dataset records information about what the government does in violation of what the law prescribes.
 
12
As robustness checks, we have constructed four alternative dependent variables, each of them being based only on the variables in one of the described categories. Our main results reported in Sect. 5 apply to all four dimensions of religious minority discrimination, suggesting that all of them are influenced by Islamic constitutionalism in a similar fashion (results available on request).
 
13
Other examples of research utilizing the same identification strategy are studies by Coşgel et al. (2018, 2019) which rely on the distances to various “religious capitals”, including Mecca, as instrumental variables for countries’ levels of religious pluralism.
 
14
The rationales behind the instrumental variables, their validity, and data sources were discussed in the previous section.
 
15
The threshold of F ≥ 10 proposed by Staiger and Stock (1997) is a crude rule of thumb. Stock and Yogo (2005, p. 101) have derived a refined and improved rule of thumb that takes into account the number of endogenous indicators entered into the regression, the number of instrumental variables and the maximum size distortion (r) to be tolerated. If we set r equal to 0.20, the corresponding critical value is 8.75. Two of the F-values in Table 4 fall below that threshold, but none of the F-values in Table 5 do so.
 
16
Tables 9 and 10 in the Appendix report our regression results without control variables, but including region- and year-fixed effects. Even when we omit all control variables, the coefficient estimates remain stable and our variables of interest have statistically significant effects on discrimination. Table 11 provides descriptive statistics corresponding to Tables 9 and 10.
 
17
In a robustness check, we add controls for social trust, years of schooling in the population over the age of 15, and a Gini index for income inequality. Our results do not change and are available on request.
 
Literatur
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review, 91(5), 1369–1401.
Ahmed, D., & Ginsburg, T. (2014). Constitutional Islamization and human rights: The surprising origin and spread of Islamic supremacy in constitutions. Virginia Journal of International Law, 54(3), 1–82.
Ahmed, D., & Gouda, M. (2015). Measuring constitutional Islamization: Insights from the Islamic Constitutions Index. Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 38(1), 1–76.
An-Na’im, A. A. (1987). Religious minorities under Islamic law and the limits of cultural relativism. Human Rights Quarterly, 9(1), 1–18.
An-Na’im, A. A. (1996). Toward an Islamic reformation: Civil liberties, human rights, and international law. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Ashraf, W., & Galor, O. (2013). The ‘Out of Africa’ Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development. American Economic Review, 103(1), 1–46.
Awang, A. R. (1994). The status of the dhimmi in Islamic law. Kuala Lumpur: International Law Book Services.
Barro, R. J., & McCleary, R. M. (2005). Which countries have state religions? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120(4), 1331–1370.
Belge, C., & Karakoç, E. (2015). Minorities in the Middle East: Ethnicity, religion, and support for authoritarianism. Political Research Quarterly, 68(2), 1–13.
Bennett, C. (2005). Muslims and modernity: An introduction to the issues and debates. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Berggren, N., & Bjørnskov, C. (2013). Does religiosity promote property rights and the rule of law? Journal of Institutional Economics, 9(2), 161–185.
Berggren, N., Bjørnskov, C., & Nilsson, T. (2017). What aspects of society matter for the quality of life of a minority? Global evidence from the new Gay Happiness Index. Social Indicators Research, 132(3), 1163–1192.
Bernholz, P. (1991). The constitution of totalitarianism. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 147(3), 425–440.
Bernholz, P. (2004). Supreme values as the basis for terror. European Journal of Political Economy, 20(2), 317–333.
Bernholz, P. (2006). International political system, supreme values and terrorism. Public Choice, 128(1/2), 221–231.
Bernholz, P. (2017). Totalitarianism, terrorism and supreme values: History and theory. Cham: Springer.
Blaydes, L., & Chaney, E. (2016). Political economy legacy of institutions from the classical period of Islam. In Palgrave Macmillan (Ed.), The New Palgrave dictionary of economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Brenner, M. (2008). A short history of the Jews. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Buchanan, J. M. (2002). Why do constitutions matter? In N. Berggren, N. Karlson, & J. Nergelius (Eds.), Why constitutions matter (pp. 1–16). New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.
Chaney, E. (2012). Democratic change in the Arab world, past and present. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 42, 363–400.
Cooray, A., & Potrafke, N. (2011). Gender inequality in education: Political institutions or culture and religion? European Journal of Political Economy, 27(2), 268–280.
Coşgel, M. M., Histen, M., Miceli, T. J., & Yıldırım, S. (2018). State and religion over time. Journal of Comparative Economics, 46(1), 20–34.
Coşgel, M. M., Hwang, J., Miceli, T. J., & Yıldırım, S. (2019). Religiosity: Identifying the effect of pluralism. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 158, 219–235.
Dreher, A. (2006). Does globalization affect growth? Evidence from a new index of globalization. Applied Economics, 38(10), 1091–1110.
Elkins, Z., Ginsburg, T., & Melton, J. (2009). The endurance of national constitutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Emon, A. M. (2012). Religious pluralism and Islamic law: Dhimmis and others in the Empire of Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Esposito, J. L. (2003). Ahl al-Kitab. In J. L. Esposito (Ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (p. 10). New York: Oxford University Press.
Facchini, F. (2010). Religion, law and development: Islam and Christianity—Why is it in Occident and not in the Orient that man invented the institutions of freedom? European Journal of Law and Economics, 29(1), 103–129.
Facchini, F. (2013). Economic freedom in Muslim countries: An explanation using the theory of institutional path dependency. European Journal of Law and Economics, 36(1), 139–167.
Feld, L. P., & Voigt, S. (2003). Economic growth and judicial independence: Cross-country evidence using a new set of indicators. European Journal of Political Economy, 19(3), 497–527.
Fox, J. (2007). Religious discrimination: A world survey. Journal of International Affairs, 61, 47–67.
Fox, J. (2011). Building composite measures of religion and state. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 7(8), 1–39.
Fox, J. (2013). Religious discrimination against religious minorities in Middle Eastern Muslim states. Civil Wars, 15(4), 454–470.
Fox, J. (2014). Is it really God’s century? An evaluation of religious support and discrimination from 1990 to 2008. Politics and Religion, 7(1), 4–27.
Fox, J. (2015). Political secularism, religion, and the state: A time Series analysis of worldwide data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fox, J. (2016). The unfree exercise of religion: A world survey of discrimination against religious minorities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fox, J., Finke, R., & Mataic, D. R. (2018). New data and measures on societal discrimination and religious minorities. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 14(14), 1–37.
Fox, J., & Flores, D. (2009). Religions, constitutions, and the state: A cross-national study. The Journal of Politics, 71(4), 1499–1513.
Gassebner, M., Lamla, M. J., & Vreeland, J. R. (2013). Extreme bounds of democracy. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 57(2), 171–197.
Gill, A. (2005). The political origins of religious liberty: A theoretical outline. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 1(1), 1–35.
Glenn, H. P. (2010). Legal traditions of the world: Sustainable diversity in law (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gouda, M. (2013). Islamic constitutionalism and rule of law: A constitutional economics perspective. Constitutional Political Economy, 24(1), 57–85.
Gouda, M., & Potrafke, N. (2016). Gender equality in Muslim-majority countries. Economic Systems, 40(4), 683–698.
Gründler, K., & Krieger, T. (2016). Democracy and growth: Evidence from a machine learning indicator. European Journal of Political Economy, 45, 85–107.
Gründler, K., & Krieger, T. (2018). Machine learning indices, political institutions, and economic development. CESifo Working Paper 6930.
Gutmann, J., & Voigt, S. (2015). The rule of law and constitutionalism in Muslim countries. Public Choice, 162(3), 351–380.
Gutmann, J., & Voigt, S. (2018). The rule of law and Islam. In C. May & A. Winchester (Eds.), The Edward Elgar handbook on the rule of law (pp. 345–356). Cheltenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Gygli, S., Haelg, F., Potrafke, N., & Sturm, J.-E. (2019). The KOF globalization index—Revisited. The Review of International Organizations, 14(3), 543–574.
Hillman, A. L. (2007). Economic and security consequences of supreme values. Public Choice, 131(3–4), 259–280.
Hillman, A. L. (2019). Public finance and public policy: A political economy perspective on the responsibilities and limitations of government (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hillman, A. L., & Potrafke, N. (2018). Economic freedom and religion: An empirical investigation. Public Finance Review, 46(2), 249–275.
Kis-Katos, K., Liebert, H., & Schulze, G. G. (2014). On the heterogeneity of terror. European Economic Review, 68, 116–136.
Kuran, T. (1995). Private truths, public lies: The social consequences of preference falsification. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kuran, T. (2004). The economic ascent of the Middle East’s religious minorities: The role of Islamic legal pluralism. The Journal of Legal Studies, 33(2), 475–515.
Kuran, T. (2011). The long divergence: How Islamic law held back the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kuran, T. (2016). Legal roots of authoritarian rule in the Middle East: Civic legacies of the Islamic Waqf. The American Journal of Comparative Law, 64(2), 419–454.
Kuran, T. (2018). Islam and economic performance: Historical and contemporary links. Journal of Economic Literature, 56(4), 1292–1359.
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. (1999). The quality of government. The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 15(1), 222–279.
Lombardi, C. B. (1998). Islamic law as a source of constitutional law in Egypt: The constitutionalization of the Sharia in a modern Arab state. Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 37(1), 81–124.
Michalopoulos, S., Naghavi, A., & Prarolo, G. (2018). Trade and geography in the spread of Islam. The Economic Journal, 128(616), 3210–3241.
Minority Rights Group International. (2018). Peoples under threat 2018. London: Minority Rights Group International.
Nunn, N., & Puga, D. (2012). Ruggedness: The blessing of bad geography in Africa. Review of Economics and Statistics, 94(1), 20–36.
Patrick, G. H. (2007). Legal traditions of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Persson, T., & Tabellini, G. (2003). The economic effects of constitutions. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
Pfaff, S. (2011). Religion under communism: State regulation, atheist competition, and the dynamics of supply and demand. In R. M. McCleary (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the economics of religion (pp. 235–256). New York: Oxford University Press.
Potrafke, N. (2012). Islam and democracy. Public Choice, 151(1–2), 185–192.
Potrafke, N. (2013). Democracy and countries with Muslim majorities: A reply and update. Public Choice, 154(3/4), 323–332.
Potrafke, N. (2015). The evidence on globalization. The World Economy, 38(3), 509–552.
Powell, E. J. (2013). Islamic law states and the International Court of Justice. Journal of Peace Research, 50(2), 203–217.
Rahman, F. Z. (2013). The effects of state-established religion on religious freedom for minorities. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 9(8), 1–24.
Rowley, C. K., & Smith, N. (2009). Islam’s democracy paradox: Muslims claim to like democracy, so why do they have so little? Public Choice, 139(3/4), 273–299.
Sarkissian, A., Fox, J., & Akbaba, Y. (2011). Culture vs. rational choice: Assessing the causes of religious discrimination in Muslim states. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 17(4), 423–446.
Savage, A. L. (2014). Turning the other cheek: The persecution of the Christian minority. Florida Journal of International Law, 26(3), 373–398.
Schacht, J. (1964). Introduction to Islamic law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Staiger, D., & Stock, J. H. (1997). Instrumental variables regression with weak instruments. Econometrica, 65(3), 557–586.
Stilt, K. (2013). Constitutional Islam: Genealogies, transmissions and meanings. In B. T. Edwards (Ed.), On the ground: New directions in Middle East and North African studies (pp. 103–108). Doha: Northwestern University in Qatar.
Stock, J. H., & Yogo, M. (2005). Testing for weak instruments in linear IV regression. In D. W. K. Andrews & J. H. Stock (Eds.), Identification and inference for econometric models: Essays in Honor of Thomas Rothenberg (pp. 80–108). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sun, L. (2018). Implementing valid two-step identification-robust confidence sets for linear instrumental-variables models. The Stata Journal, 18(4), 803–825.
Tadjdini, A. (2011). Constitutionalisation of Islam in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq: A step back for the position of human rights? Nordic Journal of Human Rights, 29(4), 353–368.
The Times. (2006, March 21). Anger over Christian convert in Kabul who faces death (p. 33).
Voigt, S. (2005). Islam and the institutions of a free society. The Independent Review, 10(1), 59–82.
Voigt, S. (2011). Positive constitutional economics II: A survey of recent developments. Public Choice, 146(1/2), 205–256.
Voigt, S., Gutmann, J., & Feld, L. P. (2015). Economic growth and judicial independence, a dozen years on: Cross-country evidence using an updated Set of indicators. European Journal of Political Economy, 38, 197–211.
Metadaten
Titel
Islamic constitutions and religious minorities
verfasst von
Moamen Gouda
Jerg Gutmann
Publikationsdatum
19.11.2019
Verlag
Springer US
Erschienen in
Public Choice / Ausgabe 3-4/2021
Print ISSN: 0048-5829
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-7101
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-019-00748-7

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 3-4/2021

Public Choice 3-4/2021 Zur Ausgabe

OriginalPaper

The limits of central bank independence for inflation performance

EditorialNotes

Investigation in search of truth

OriginalPaper

The role of ECB communication in guiding markets

OriginalPaper

The political economy of hyperinflation in Venezuela

OriginalPaper

Public perceptions and bond markets during the Great War: the case of a neutral country

OriginalPaper

Stable money and central bank independence: implementing monetary institutions in postwar Germany