State Recognition, Legitimacy, and Tolerance: Muslims in the West

This study examines the ways in which state policies recognize, accommodate and legitimize immigrant cultures, and analyzes the extent to which state accommodation leads to acceptance and tolerance toward immigrants. It argues that state recognition and accommodation of immigrant cultures normalize new practices and traditions by making them a part of the country's cultural landscape. When a state ignores or actively excludes an immigrant culture, however, it frames those associated with it as outsiders or lesser-citizens, and makes tolerance toward them less likely. To test that hypothesis, this study focuses on the Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, since their case involves a salient (real or perceived) cultural distance to the host societies. The study employs a mixed-methods research. It first examines the Belgian, British and German cases, and traces the process from state accommodation to tolerance. Then, it specifies a multilevel regression model. This second analysis covers twenty countries in Western Europe. Data come primarily from the Religious Support and Accommodation of Islam indexes, and the latest wave of the European Values Study. Findings offer strong support for the proposed theory.