Muslim Religiosity and Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review

Religiosity is one of the types of bonds that can prevent delinquency among adolescents (Hirschi, 1969). Much of the literature on religiosity and delinquency has focused on non-Muslim populations, although lately more studies have explored the differences in delinquency rates among adolescents with various religious denominations (e.g., Baier 2014; Seto, 2021), including Muslims. The question is highly relevant and timely as conversations regarding Muslim proneness to crime is becoming more heated (Bershidsky, 2018; Seto, 2021). Against this backdrop, this article raises the question: based on the currently available evidence, how is Muslim religiosity linked with delinquency? To address this gap, this article reports a systematic review that synthesizes the current evidence on Muslim religiosity and delinquency among Muslim adolescents in different contexts and countries.

There is no shortage of studies attempting to understand why adolescents and youth are involved in delinquency and crime. One of the earliest social theories to understand and explain delinquency used the perspective of societal bonds (Hirschi, 1969). According to the theory, attachment to others comprises the internalization of norms and conscience that prevents an individual from committing crime through their attachment to parents, caregivers, families, and schools (1969). Attachments to families and schools have received wide attention in past studies (Yuksek & Solakoglu, 2016; Hoeve et al., 2012). In the current review, the focus is on religiosity as a form of bond that seems to have an unclear and complicated relationship with juvenile delinquency.

Earlier works that apply social bond theory in the context of religiosity has focused on the Christian religiosity (Hirschi & Stark, 1969). The study found that adolescents who attended church were not less likely to commit delinquency – and the authors concluded that religions did not matter in reducing delinquency among adolescents. However, in the same era, another study (Higgins & Albrecht, 1977) argued against the generalizability of Hirschi and Stark’s (1969) study and found that church attendance did have a negative relationship with delinquency. According to the study, religiosity might matter more for the adolescents in the Southern United States than in the Northern United States. Making the relationship between religiosity and delinquency even more perplexing, another study replicated Hirschi and Stark’s (1969) original findings, except for “victimless” crime such as the use of marijuana and alcohol (Burkett & White, 1974).

A few decades later, due to the complex relationship between religiosity and delinquency shown by studies, the idea of context was revisited (Stark, 1996), specifically on the “social contexts and social structures” (p. 172) of society that are responsible for the mixed relationship between religiosity and delinquency. However, this is not entirely new—an earlier study already highlighted the importance of context (Higgins & Albrecht, 1977), where Southern adolescents responded to religiosity more than their Northern counterparts. This is also referred to as the “moral climates”, a term referring to how the influence of religiosity is more pronounced in a religious community compared to a secular community (Stark et al., 1982). In later years, more studies began to acknowledge the importance of contexts in understanding the relationship between religiosity and delinquency; they also noted that the original hypothesis by Hirschi & Stark (1969) was too broad and required differentiation (Cochran & Akers, 1989).

Various aspects of the human experience can play a role in moderating the relationship between religiosity and delinquency. To explain the influence of contexts, three models were proposed to understand why prior findings regarding the relationship between religiosity and delinquency have been mixed (Baier & Wright, 2001): (1) the moral community hypothesis, (2) the effect of religosity on nonvictim crimes, and (3) methodological variations in past studies.

According to the moral community hypothesis, the nondeterrent effects of religiosity on crime should only be observed in areas where religiosity is accepted as a valid basis to determine the legitimacy of values and actions (i.e., morality). Hence, according to the hypothesis, a place that is highly secularized (e.g., Northern United States as in Higgins & Albrecht’s study in 1977) will see a lower deterrent effect of religiosity on crime compared to less secularized, or more religious, communities (e.g., Southern United States).

Second, the effect of religiosity on crime was usually stronger when the effects were analyzed separately for victimless crimes such as substance abuse versus crimes with victims such as violent and property crimes. This pattern calls attention to the importance of the type of delinquency investigated in each study. Studies on religiosity have operationalized crime and delinquency in different ways, ranging from petty crimes to violence (e.g., Johnson et al., 2001; Li, 2014). Some studies also focused on radicalization and terrorism (e.g., Pedersen et al., 2018; Rousseau, et al., 2019), but these behaviors seem to be in a “league of their own” and require an analysis separate from studies that focus on more conventinal forms of delinquency.

Third, the methodological variations argument states that studies with smaller sample sizes that focus on particular backgrounds (e.g., White respondents) typically yield larger effect sizes for religiosity on crime when compared to studies using larger sample sizes. Because of this, the third model suggests that there is value to smaller studies, contrary to the commonly held belief that the bigger the size of the sample, the better the study. Instead, having a too large of a sample size may decrease the quality of the sample because “the sampling design becomes more difficult to carry out effectively” (p.  17).

Much of the literature on the relationship between religiosity and delinquency has been set in the context of Christian and Western cultures. However, the Muslim population around the world is increasing year by year (Desilver & Masci, 2017), and there is a prevalent public perception that often associates Muslim populations with crime (Seto, 2021), especially in some countries like the United Kingdom. As such, given the complexity surrounding the relationship between religiosity and delinquency, and the rarity of academic discourse on the dynamics of Muslim religiosity and delinquency, this article aims to provide a systematic review of the recent literature on this topic. This article will report the most salient themes from findings of studies investigating the relationship between various facets of Muslim religiosity and delinquency, as well as current gaps that may serve as future avenues for research.

Characteristics of Muslim Religiosity

Although different religious faiths share some characteristics regarding the aspects of rituals and beliefs, Muslim religiosity possesses complexities unique to the religion of Islam. At its most basic form, Muslim religiosity comprises three levels: Islaam (outward submission and practices), Imaan (faith), and Ihsaan (spiritual excellence) (Parrott, 2019). Islaam is basically the five pillars of practices, beginning from the declaration of Shahadah (belief) to completion of Hajj (pilgrimage). Imaan is the affirmation in the belief that comprises six elements: the God, the Messengers, the Books, the Angels, the Resurrection, and Qadar (divine decree). Finally, Ihsaan is when a Muslim adheres to excellence in the Islamic lifestyle, including treating others well, forgiveness of wrongdoings, giving charity, and other socially responsible acts or deeds.

Given these different elements, Muslim religiosity is unique and adherence to it is complex to measure. One scale developed to capture the elements of Muslim religiosity conceptualized it into five components: Beliefs, Attitudes, Spiritual Behavior and Connection, Institutional Connection, and Contribution (BASIC) (Desouky & Umarji, 2021). However, although BASIC has been shown to correlate with markers of wellbeing among Muslims worldwide, which might indicate a criterion validity, a formal assessment of its validity and reliability has not been established.

Researchers from other parts of the world have attempted to develop specific measures of Muslim religiosity. A measure was developed based on the three levels of faith as mentioned above (Islaam, Imaan, and Ihsaan) (Mohd Mahudin et al., 2016). One of the strengths of this measure is that the researchers have established its good psychometric properties. However, the researchers stated that this measure was developed for use in an organizational setting, indicating it may have limited utility and applicability.

Muslim Religiosity and Delinquency

Religiosity has a complex relationship with delinquency, and this is even more the case for Muslim religiosity. As mentioned above, criticisms have pointed out that most studies on religiosity and delinquency have been conducted in Western and Christian contexts, questioning the generalizability of the findings to other religions (Brauer et al., 2013). Given the extensive arguments for the expansion of studies on religiosity and delinquency to other contexts (e.g., Stark 1996), data from other religious and cultural contexts must be collected and compared with their Western counterparts. This is especially important as the world is becoming more diverse with respect to religiosity (Pew Research Center, 2015) and the Muslim population is projected to be nearly equal to the Christian population in a few decades. In the past few years, some – albeit limited – studies on religiosity and delinquency have examined other religions, including Islam.

At first look, the findings of studies on Muslim religiosity and juvenile delinquency have been mixed. Some studies found a negative relationship between Muslim religiosity and delinquency (Brauer et al., 2013; Seto, 2021), such that individuals who reported being more religious also committed fewer delinquent acts. However, the opposite findings found that Muslim religiosity was related to increased delinquency (Baier, 2014; Carol et al., 2020).

Several hypotheses can be offered to explain these discrepancies in findings. First, although all these studies examined Muslim religiosity as a common variable, the contexts in which the Muslim samples were recruited were different. Some studies were conducted in Muslim majority countries such as Bangladesh (Brauer et al., 2013) and some in non-Muslim majority countries like the United Kingdom (Seto, 2021), and Germany (Baier, 2014; Carol et al., 2020). In this aspect, Germany is regarded as a secularized state where atheism has become the predominant background among the Germans (Thompson, 2012), which might affect the Muslims’ sense of belonging; however, Muslims in Britain reported feeling “British” and part of the British cultures, signifying their level of positive assimilation within the region (Rashid, 2021). This arguably highlights the importance of the “contexts” – i.e., areas where the data collection takes place. In this regard, it matters if the countries are Muslim majority or non-Muslim majority, which brings forward issues often examined by sociologists, such as acculturation. Revisiting the model posed by Baier & Wright (2001), the level of acceptance of religious values in a society may influence the relationship between religiosity and delinquency.

The second explanation relates to the argument of abstinence (Carol et al., 2020), which refers to Muslims who practice a lifestyle adhering to Islamic rules by, for example, not drinking alcohol. In the context of this review, this is an important point to ponder due to several reasons. First, Islam is argued to be a highly collectivistic religion with emphasis on proper dealings with others as much as the ritualistic practices (Bassiouni, 2012). This is parallel to early arguments related to social bond theory (Hirschi, 1969), by which it is the socialization of accepted norms and values that forms a well-functioning individual. It can be argued that these elements of socialization that are promoted by Islamic values diminish over time within non-abstinent Muslims. Therefore, for non-abstinent Muslims, their “bond” with their main community is weakened.

These mixed findings regarding Muslim religiosity and delinquency prompt questions, the answers to which further illuminate the processes and mechanisms on how Muslim religiosity can provide deterrent effects against committing delinquent acts. One of the considerations that should be discussedis the potential influence of collective rituals among Muslims. For example, a study demonstrated that it is more collective religious rituals such as going to mosque—rather than religious devotion itself—that predict the support for the idea of suicide attacks (Ginges et al., 2009). Although the current review is not framed to understand suicide attacks, Ginges and colleagues’ (2009) study provided early understanding of how collective rituals should be an important consideration when exploring the dynamics of religiosity in delinquency.

Ginges et al.’s (2009) study drew controversy by demonstrating the role of religion in promoting suicide attacks through religious priming, and they argued that this might be dependent on geopolitical factors as there are some groups, such as Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, that still support suicide attacks without being attached to any organized religion. On the contrary, studies elsewhere have shown that religious priming may yield positive effects on individuals, such as prosociality (Batara et al., 2016), honesty (Aveyard, 2014), and cooperative behavior (Xygalatas, 2013). However, studies on religious priming have further raised the question on the generalizability of the findings since many of them have been conducted in Western contexts. Furthermore, religious priming might not work the same way for Muslims living in a Muslim country as the level of threshold of activation for the religious priming is lower in Western contexts that are usually less religious and more secular (Aveyard, 2014).

Recent Systematic Reviews

There have been a few systematic reviews of studies examining the relationship between religiosity and delinquency (Adamczyk et al., 2017; Hardy et al., 2019; Johnson et al., 2000). In general, these reviews have demonstrated the protective factor of religiosity against delinquency. However, the available systematic reviews were done without specific considerations of the complex nuances of Muslim religiosity and its relationship with delinquency. For example, in one review, being “Muslim” was mentioned only in discussion of how being a religious minority can put someone in the position of being stigmatized (Adamczyk et al., 2017), which was similar to the review by Hardy et al., (2019). Therefore, understanding the link between religiosity and delinquency among Muslim adolescents is needed to expand the literature on the scope of the topic.

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