A study funded by the European Commission (EURISLAM-Survey) in six European countries showed that religious Christians and Muslims accept the religious rights of the other group to a greater extent than less religious individuals. This finding illustrates that religious individuals solidarize with each other across religious boundaries.

Sarah Carol (University of Cologne), Marc Helbling (University of Bamberg) und Ines Michalowski (WZB) investigated attitudes towards religious rights for Christians and Muslims in Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Netherlands and Switzerland. The analyses are based on the EURISLAM survey conducted among more than 7,000 natives and Muslim minorities from the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Morocco and Pakistan. The focus lies on attitudes towards Christian religious symbols for teachers (e.g. habit or cross), the headscarf for teachers, Islamic education and Christian education in public schools.

The researchers were able to show that natives do not reject Islamic rights per se, but clearly differentiate between religious symbols for teachers and religious education. They accept Islamic education to a greater extent than the headscarf for teachers. However, also Muslim minorities themselves support the headscarf for teachers to a lesser extent than religious education. Yet, there are differences between ethnic groups: Moroccan and Pakistani minorities are more likely to support religious rights than the Yugoslav or Turkish minority.

Besides differences between ethnic groups, they observe cross-national differences:

Controlled for gender, age and education of the individuals, they find that Dutch natives accept the headscarf to the greatest extent (natives 45%, minorities 79%). In Germany only 36% of the natives and 66% of the minorities said so. On average, Christian and Islamic education is most supported in Germany and Belgium (about 70% of the natives), and least supported in France and Great Britain. Switzerland and Netherlands are positioned in-between. In France, a large gap between natives’ and minorities’ attitudes towards religious education is observed, which is a potential source of conflict.