The vicious circle of religious prejudice: Islamophobia makes the acculturation attitudes of majority and minority members clash

Public discourse often portrays Islam as the main obstacle for Muslim minorities’
integration, paying little attention to the contextual factors hindering
this process. Here, we focus on islamophobia as one destructive factor that
hinders the mutual integration between Muslim minority and Western
majority members, affecting both groups. In Study 1, the more islamophobic
majority members were, the more they expected Muslims to give up their
heritage culture and the less they wanted them to integrate. In Study 2, only
when Muslims experienced substantial religious discrimination did religious
identity negatively relate to national engagement and particularly positively
relate to ethnic engagement. Together, the studies suggest that religious
prejudice in the form of islamophobia is a major obstacle to Muslims’ integration
because it increases the incongruity between majority and minority
members’ acculturation attitudes.