Very few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most... Show moreVery few studies explicitly, let alone quantitatively, examine gaps in religious intolerance among individual Muslims based on affiliation with major Muslim organizations in Indonesia. Most existing studies either focus on a single organization (non-comparative), are at the organizational policy level (not examining individual attitudes), or use a limited number of samples in their analysis. Against this backdrop, this study compares Indonesian Muslims’ levels of religious intolerance based on their affiliation with Muslim organizations or traditions: Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah, and other organizations. We utilize a large-scale household survey, the 2014 Indonesia Family Life Survey-5, and run an ordinal logistic regression to identify organizations’ rank on the religious intolerance scale. We find that Muslims without any affiliation with a Muslim organization (some 18 percent of Indonesian Muslims) are the most tolerant. Against this reference group, we find that NU followers are generally the most tolerant, followed by those affiliated with Muhammadiyah, and those affiliated with other Muslim organizations. This finding adds a stock of knowledge to our understanding of religion and society, especially regarding interfaith relations in Indonesia and in the Muslim world in general. Methodologically, this study also shows the benefit and feasibility of identifying the dynamic of religious intolerance using a quantitative approach at a micro level. Show less
Motivated by increasing religious intolerance, we study the socio-economic covariates of individual-level religious intolerance in Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world. We use panel... Show moreMotivated by increasing religious intolerance, we study the socio-economic covariates of individual-level religious intolerance in Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world. We use panel data from 2007 and 2014 of more than 20,000 adult individuals (representing 83% of the population) and apply fixed-effect regression analysis to identify relevant socio-economic characteristics that are highly associated with religious intolerance at the individual level. We utilize survey questions on willingness to accept someone with different faith living in the same village, living in the same neighborhood, renting a house, marrying relatives or children, and building a place of worship in the neighborhood as our measures of religious intolerance. We find that higher individual income and educational attainment are positively correlated with the tolerance level. At the same time, a higher level of self-declared religiosity is negatively correlated with a tolerant attitude. For location-specific characteristics, higher income inequality and extent of poverty in the location where an individual resides are associated with a higher level of religious intolerance. These patterns are generally robust across different measures of religious intolerance, although there is heterogeneity in the magnitudes of the correlations, where these covariates have the smallest correlations with the willingness to accept interfaith marriage in the family. Show less
