Religiosity or Religious Identity? Measuring Muslim Identity in the Study of Anti-Americanism

<p>Theories of anti-Americanism in the Arab world imply that hostility towards the United States stems from religious identity, yet individual-level findings from empirical studies remain mixed. I argue that this inconsistency may partly reflect how religious identity is measured in the literature—as religiosity, denomination, or identity salience. I derive two main constraints that the existing framework faces: conceptual mismatch with the identity-based explanations suggested by theoretical literature and limited variation in predominantly Muslim populations. I use two waves of Arab Barometer data (N = 2,336) to show how these constraints specifically apply to the case of Iraq and the region in general. The findings suggest that religious identity is not a self-interpreting individual attribute and cannot be treated as a portable predictor of anti-Americanism. In Iraq, anti-Americanism is associated with sectarian identity; however, that relationship only becomes interpretable once Iraq’s Sunni-Shia sectarian cleavage is understood.</p>