Society and Mental Health Does Religion Buffer the · 2019. 6. 18. · of other religious...

Does Religion Buffer theEffects of Discriminationon Distress for ReligiousMinorities? The Case ofArab Americans

Sarah Shah1

Abstract

Religiosity is well documented as a coping resource that protects against the effects of discrimination ondistress, but little is known about the utility of religious minorities’ religiosity. This study investigates if reli-gious resources buffer the effect of discrimination on distress for Arab Americans and if that relationshipdiffers based on religious minority status. Following the contours of the stress process model, I leveragedata from the 2003 Detroit Arab American Survey (DAAS; N = 977) to test the relationship between dis-tress, discrimination, and three measures of religiosity: frequency of religious service attendance, Godsalience, and salient religious practices. The results indicate that for the overall sample, only salient reli-gious practices buffered discrimination. However, when religious affiliation was taken into account, theresults indicate that both God salience and salient religious practices significantly buffer discriminationfor Muslim respondents only. I conclude with theoretical contributions, study limitations, and futureresearch avenues.

Keywords

stress process model, religious minorities, stress buffering

INTRODUCTION

The buffering role of religiosity in reducing the

relationship between discrimination and distress

is well-documented. What happens, then, in the

case of religious minorities for whom religiosity

itself may be a source of distress and discrimina-

tion? In recent studies on Arab and/or Muslim

American mental health, Muslim identity is often

treated as a de facto stressor. This approach stems

from the historical ways in which American reli-

gious and ethnic minorities are studied, reinforc-

ing an assimilation imperative. For example, Gor-

don (1964), one of the earliest sociologists to

investigate how religion impacted immigrant

assimilation, focused on how religion could create

constructed categories in social lives but ignored

how religiosity could be dynamically resourced

as a “toolkit” (Bartkowski and Read 2003).

Gordon notably neglected discussions on Arabs

or Muslims, despite the fact that Arabs have

been immigrating to the United States since at

least 1854 (Miller 1976). This represents another

trend in immigration and mental health literature:

Despite the presence of Arabs in America, there

has been a general dearth of scholarship on Arab

Americans until the tragic events of September

1University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Sarah Shah, Department of Sociology, University of

Toronto, 725 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S2J4

[email protected]

Society and Mental Health2019, Vol. 9(2) 171–191

� American Sociological Association 2018DOI: 10.1177/2156869318799145

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11; after that point, Arab and Muslim Americans

were catapulted into the research spotlight. Chris-

tian Arab American mental health, however,

remains poorly investigated.

Although treating Muslim identity as a de facto

stressor is consistent with the social realities of

Arab American lives in an Islamophobic context,

it also precludes analyzing religion as a resource

in mental health coping despite the well-

documented stress-buffering potential of religion

generally (for a review, see Harrison et al. 2001)

and Islam specifically (Amer et al. 2008). Thus, I

argue that Muslim religiosity and the religiosity

of other religious minorities need to be treated

with more nuance. While identifying as a religious

minority can expose individuals to stressful dis-

criminatory experiences, religious practice can

also provide individuals with resources to cope

with, understand, or even transform meanings of

stressful experiences (McLeod 2012; Thoits 2010).

As a rapidly developing field, Arab American

religiosity and mental health is simultaneously

underresearched yet necessary. Amer and Bagasra

(2013) have made calls for culturally informed

approaches to Muslim mental health, particularly

in the current era of Islamophobia. When Islam is

constructed as a measure away from whiteness,

Muslims are reified as the other (Said 1978). In

line with Johns, Mansouri, and Lobo’s (2015:171)

call to “explore expressions of Islamic religiosity

as they are grounded in everyday multicultural envi-

ronments,” this paper draws on previous studies on

Arab and Muslim American mental health and

advances this line of research by investigating the

potential buffering role religiosity can play in the

discrimination-distress relationship. Furthermore,

this paper also investigates if religious minority sta-

tus moderates the buffering potential of religiosity.

Although this study draws on data collected in

2003, the analysis is both substantively and theo-

retically relevant as the study analyzes Arab

American distress in the aftermath of September

11—arguably one of the most traumatic events

globally (Shah, Acevedo, and Ruiz 2017) and cer-

tainly for Arab Americans (Cainkar 2002; Disha,

Cavendish, and King 2011; Haque 2004; Kaushal,

Kaestner, and Reimers 2007; Lauderdale 2006). In

the nearly two decades since the tragedy of Sep-

tember 11, there have been several spikes in

anti-Arab hate crimes, some even surpassing the

post-9/11 levels of discrimination; however, these

peaks are notably always compared to the post-9/

11 climate as a standard (see Levin 2017a, 2017b).

Thus, 9/11 continues to be remembered as the

event that “changed Muslim American lives for-

ever” (O’Connor 2016).

This study analyzes data from the Detroit Arab

American Survey (Baker et al. 2003a). Previous

studies drawing on this dataset and that have found

that discriminatory experience is significantly cor-

related with distress, Muslim respondents report

experiencing significantly more discrimination

than their Christian counterparts, yet also that

Muslim respondents do not report statistically

greater distress levels (Padela and Heisler 2010).

However, this data set has not been used to exam-

ine the buffering role of religion on the relation-

ship between discrimination and distress. There-

fore, in this study, I investigate the following

questions:

Research Question 1: Does religiosity moder-

ate the relationship between discrimination

and distress?

Research Question 2: Does the impact of reli-

giosity differ by religious minority status?

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the following review, I highlight the sociohis-

torical milieu the Arab American community has

endured over the past century, with a focus on

September 11 and its aftermath, followed by

a focused review on Arab American mental health.

Sociohistorical Context

Though Arabs first began entering the US in the

mid-1800s (Miller 1976), Arab Americans have

become more excluded over time from the Amer-

ican mainstream as they face increasing levels

of discrimination both institutionally and indivi-

dually. Discrimination experienced by the Arab

American community over the past century

includes government surveillance, hate crimes,

racial profiling, home invasions, telephone threats,

firebombing of offices, vandalism of mosques and

cultural institutions, murder, discrimination at

workplaces and schools, and negative media rep-

resentation of Arabs and Muslims (Cainkar

2002; Disha et al. 2011; Georgakas 1975; Haque

2004; Kaushal et al. 2007; Kulczycki and

Lobo 2001; Lauderdale 2006; Salaita 2005; Sam-

han 1987). Unlike other “white” ethnic minorities,

like Southern and Eastern Europeans, that were

172 Society and Mental Health 9(2)

absorbed into the social construction of main-

stream white America in the twentieth century,

Arab Americans remain an ethnic other due in

part to the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Gulf wars,

and most recently, the War on Terror. These larger

global politics result in bright boundaries (Alba

2005), constructing Arab Americans as unassimi-

lable and Arab immigrants as “the most ‘foreign’

of all immigrants” (Samhan 1987:13).

Following the tragedy of September 11, 2001,

Arab Americans faced a significant backlash at

the institutional level, including discriminatory

government policies and dwindling labor market

opportunities, as well as at the local level from

fellow Americans as the events surrounding the

tragedy “transformed Arabs and Muslims into

convenient targets for acts of ‘vicarious retribu-

tion’” (Disha et al. 2011:26) The government,

what Cainkar (2002:23) refers to as “the greatest

source of discrimination against Arabs and Mus-

lims in the US today,” developed special tactics

in an effort against terrorism but that also targeted

and alienated Arab Americans. Types of harass-

ment include interrogation, surveillance, deten-

tion, closures of religious and cultural institutions,

and government agent visitations at both home and

work (Cainkar 2002). Additionally, Arab Ameri-

cans witnessed a sharp increase in discrimination

at work following September 11, which resulted

in a higher probability Arab Americans would

accept lower wages and pay cuts compared to

other Americans (Kaushal et al. 2007). In addition

to institutional discrimination, Arab Americans

also experienced racial hostility from fellow

Americans after September 11. The day after

the tragedy, a group of infuriated Americans

encircled the largest Arab mosque in Chicago,

weapons in hand, screaming “‘kill the Arabs’”

(Cainkar 2002:23). In the two months following

September 11, Americans carried out several

hundreds of violent acts, including murder,

against other Americans they perceived as Arab

or Muslim (Lauderdale 2006). The increasing

hostility Arab Americans have experienced has

led to a burgeoning body of literature on Arab

American discriminatory experiences and mental

health outcomes.

Arab American Mental Health

Most of the research that focuses on the distribu-

tion of mental health outcomes among the Arab

American population is quantitative, compares

Muslim to Christian Arab Americans, and focuses

on mental health outcomes of discrimination,

acculturation, or both. Generally, studies find

that Christian Arab Americans are more accultur-

ated and experience less discrimination than their

Muslim counterparts, discriminatory experience

is negatively correlated with acculturation and

positively correlated with distress, but also Mus-

lims are not significantly more distressed than

Christians. These results are consistent across

location and time: Some studies include samples

of Arab Americans from several states (e.g.,

Awad 2010), and some studies emerged before

the events of September 11 (e.g., Faragallah,

Schumm, and Webb 1997). A sizable body of

this literature utilizes the Detroit Arab American

Survey (DAAS; Baker et al. 2003a). While the

DAAS has been used for research outside the field

of mental health, including studies on correlates

with confidence in police (Sun and Wu 2015)

and attitudes toward counter-terror measures

(Sun, Wu, and Poteyeva 2011), the primary use

of this data has been to investigate post-9/11

Arab American mental health outcomes and dis-

criminatory experiences. Focusing on the discrim-

ination and distress literature, avenues that have

been investigated using the DAAS include accul-

turation (Aprahamian et al. 2011), proximal white-

ness (Abdulrahim et al. 2012), gender (Assari and

Lankarani 2017), cross-border ties (Samari 2016;

Tessler 2008), and immigrant status and language

preference (Abdulrahim and Baker 2009).

In the extant scholarship, including studies uti-

lizing the DAAS, Muslim affiliation is constructed

as an obstacle to Arab American acculturation

(e.g., Faragallah et al. 1997) and Muslim identity

is treated as a measure away from whiteness

(e.g., Abdulrahim et al. 2012) that would therefore

incur additional stressors for respondents. The nor-

mative logic of extant scholarship assumes Muslim

as other, or, not white. For example, items from

the Stephenson Multigroup Acculturation Scale

(SMAS), which is used in studies on immigrant

Arab acculturation (e.g., Awad 2010), measures

dominant society immersion in relation to Anglo

Americans. This scale includes items such as feel-

ing accepted by or having friends that are white

Americans, being able to speak English, and being

able to cook American food (Stephenson 2000).

In a post-9/11 America, Muslim and Arab

Americans are confronted with a host of accultur-

ation stressors in addition to dealing with

Shah 173

Islamophobia (Haque 2004). However, Muslim

religiosity and acculturation need not be pinned

against each other as the two have quite a nuanced

relationship. For example, in a study on Hazara

refugees in Australia, Copolov, Knowles, and

Meyer (2018) found that acculturation mediated

the relationship between spirituality and personal

well-being. Though this study takes place outside

the United States, Australia is similar to America

through legacies and ongoing dynamics of settler

colonialism, the social construction of a racial

hierarchy that privileges whiteness, and the cur-

rent sociopolitical tensions that are shaped by

Islamophobia and create boundaries between the

host society and Arab, particularly Muslim, immi-

grants. Additionally, problematizing Islamic reli-

giosity precludes investigations of religious cop-

ing resources for acculturation stress, including

discrimination, as religion may be integral to

immigrant adaptation (Adam and Ward 2016;

Goforth et al. 2014; Johns et al. 2015; Saroglou

and Mathijsen 2007).

Turning to scholarship on religious coping

within Arab American populations, three notable

gaps in literature exist. First, most of this literature

focuses on Muslims. To my knowledge, no study

currently exists that has focused on Arab Ameri-

can Christian religious coping, with one excep-

tion: Amer and colleagues (2008) developed the

Brief Arab Religious Coping Scale (BARCS),

a culturally sensitive measure appropriate for

both Christian and Muslim Arab Americans. How-

ever, this scale has largely been used by other

researchers to study only Muslim religious coping.

Second, Arab American religious coping gener-

ally, and the BARCS scale specifically, is mainly

researched by psychologists and has received lim-

ited attention by sociologists and social epidemiol-

ogists. Lastly, though research on Arab and non-

Arab Muslim American religious coping utilizes

quantitative methods, the sample sizes are often

small. Nevertheless, this body of literature pro-

vides useful insight.

Research on Arab and non-Arab Muslim reli-

gious coping demonstrates that religiosity does

have salutary effects in buffering the effect of

stress on psychological outcomes in both Muslim

majority and minority contexts. For example, in

a study on 220 Muslim Kuwaiti civilians who

experienced the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

and subsequent seven-month occupation, Scull

(2015) found that stronger beliefs in Islamic for-

giveness and Islamic attitudes were correlated

with less desire for revenge, more desire for for-

giveness, and better psychological well-being.

Likewise, in the migratory context, Adam and

Ward (2016) found that for New Zealand Muslims

(N = 167), religious practices buffer the effect of

acculturative stress on life satisfaction (but not

psychological) outcomes. Focusing on the Ameri-

can context, studies demonstrate the salutary

effect of religion for both Arab and non-Arab

Muslim Americans (e.g., Abu-Raiya, Pargament,

and Mahoney 2011; Ai, Peterson, and Huang

2003; Driscoll and Wierzbicki 2012; Goforth

et al. 2014; Gulamhussein and Eaton 2015; Herzig

et al. 2013). How this effect may differ for Mus-

lims as a religious minority vis-a-vis Christians,

however, remains unstudied.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In the following section I provide a brief account

of religion as a stress buffer, focusing on extant lit-

erature demonstrating this effect for racial minor-

ities before turning to the theoretical potential for

religious minorities.

The Stress Process Model andReligious Coping

Scholarship on the social determinants of mental

health is largely informed by the stress process

model (Pearlin 1989; Pearlin and Schooler

1978), which illustrates the social processes of

stress in directing poor mental health outcomes.

Stressors (e.g., discrimination) lead to poor mental

health outcomes (e.g., distress); this relationship

can be moderated (or buffered) by coping resour-

ces. Religion as a coping resource in the stress pro-

cess model has been previously theorized (see

Ellison and Henderson 2011; Schieman, Bierman,

and Ellison 2013). In this model, as illustrated in

Figure 1, religiosity buffers stress, and this effect

is measured through the interactive effects

between measures of religiosity and stressors

(see also Baron and Kenny 1986).

The religious stress-buffering model frames

religiosity as beneficial to mental health as reli-

gious engagement—particularly religious service

attendance—can grant access to social resources,

including networks and anticipated support, as

well as psychological resources, such as feelings

of Godly presence in everyday matters, which in

turn makes believers feel they matter (Schieman


et al. 2013; see also Acevedo, Ellison, and Xu

2014; Cohen 2004; Ellison and Taylor 1996;

Krause et al. 2001). In other words, in addition

to material benefits allotted to individuals who

regularly attend religious services, religious

salience can lend psychological benefits to reli-

gious individuals—the more they believe their

religious beliefs and practices matter (e.g., higher

religious salience), the more they as individuals

matter as well, increasing esteem and other subjec-

tive measures of self. Therefore, in this study, I

focus on religious service attendance, God

salience, and salient religious practices as reli-

gious resources.

Scholarship on religious resources draws on

Pargament’s (1997:90) religious coping theory,

which defines religious coping as the “process

that people engage in to attain significance in

stressful circumstances.” This process results in

more favorable health outcomes as religiosity buf-

fers the detrimental effects of stress (for a compre-

hensive review, see Harrison et al. 2001). Thus,

the salience of religious resources increases in

the face of stressful experiences. This may explain

why marginalized groups, including women, racial

minorities, and religious minorities, tend to be

more religiously observant and have higher fre-

quencies of religious practice (cf. Acevedo and

Shah 2015; Matthews, Bartkowski, and Chase

2016; Shah, Acevedo, and Ruiz 2017; Shah, Bart-

kowski, and Xu 2016). Therefore, it is likely that

religion also means more to individuals of margin-

alized status and is thus more effective in buffer-

ing stress. For example, Wang and Patten (2002)

found that religious coping benefited women but

not men. In the following sections, I highlight

the buffering effects of religion for racial and reli-

gious minorities.

Religious Buffering in Racial Minorities

Much of the literature on racial minorities and reli-

gious buffering focuses on African Americans,

given the long history of systematic and everyday

racism as well as the larger numbers of African

Americans (compared to other American minority

groups) making such analyses feasible. Religious

practice (e.g., forgiveness) is a resource that pro-

tects mental health against everyday racial dis-

crimination (Powell, Banks, and Mattis 2017).

Notably, research has demonstrated a differential

religious benefit of service attendance for African

Americans over whites (Bierman 2006; Ellison,

Musick, and Henderson 2008; Krause 2003; Tabak

and Mickelson 2009). Researchers point to the his-

torical and contemporary role African American

churches and religious congregations play in fight-

ing discrimination while providing support and

solidarity to congregants. The pivotal role of

African American churches, congregations, and

religious intellectuals and leaders—especially

that of the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference—in the Civil Rights Movement, for

example, cannot be overstated (Dickerson 2005).

While an institutional explanation is parsimo-

nious, it lacks the nuance that would explain dif-

ferences observed for other statuses (e.g., gender;

see Wang and Patten 2002). Instead, it is likely

that the underlying social inequality prompts two

mechanisms: that religion itself becomes more

salient for marginalized populations while reli-

gious institutions become mobilized as access

points to resources—both social and psychologi-

cal. This aligns with theoretical claims that social

context shapes both the meaning of religiosity and

stressors, in turn shaping mental health outcomes

(Bierman 2010; McLeod 2012; Schieman et al.

Figure 1. Conceptual model of religiosity as a moderator (buffering effects).

Shah 175

2013). Accordingly, religious beliefs, irrespective

of engagement in religious activities, can be bene-

ficial for the mental health of “groups that have

traditionally held less objective power in secular

affairs” (Schieman et al. 2013:464). Thus, for

racial minorities, religiosity is a resource that

can buffer the deleterious effects of stress on men-

tal health. But if minorities are marginalized

because of their religion, would religion still be

a resource?

Religious Coping in ReligiousMinorities

To focus on the effect of religiosity for religious

minorities, I select Arab Americans as a theoreti-

cally useful case. A common trend in extant schol-

arship is to compare immigrant Muslim samples to

native-born white Christian samples, but this

approach conflates the immigrant, nonwhite, and

religious minority experience, making it difficult

to parse out the effect of religious minority religi-

osity itself. A comparison between Christian Arab

Americans to Muslim Arab Americans, which the

current study undertakes, is a more theoretically

sound approach to studying religious minorities.

While Christian Arabs identify strongly

with Arab culture (Ajrouch and Jamal 2007),

immigrant Christian Arab religiosity mirrors

non-immigrant white Christians more closely

when compared to immigrant Muslim Arabs

(Mullet and Azar 2009). Furthermore, Arabs in

America are classified as “white” (Ibish 2001)

and only became legally recognized as a separate

cultural group in 1990, coinciding with an increase

in the Muslim proportion of Arab immigrants.

While the earlier Arab immigrant wave (e.g.,

before the collapse of the Ottoman empire,

1890–1940) was majority Christian, the latter

waves of Arab immigrants (e.g., since WWII to

current day) is majority Muslim. Arab “whiteness”

has been utilized in previous research: For exam-

ple, Arabs have been used to compare “white”

Muslims to black Muslims (e.g., Ajrouch and

Kusow 2007). However, it is important to note

that Islam in the context of American Islamopho-

bia is racialized (Considine 2017); thus, even

Muslim Arab Americans are “othered.” In schol-

arly literature, the categorical descriptors Arab

and Muslim are often used interchangeably

because they are socially constructed as synony-

mous. Despite the historically and contemporarily

larger proportion of Christian Arab Americans to

Muslim Arab Americans in the Detroit metro

area (Baker et al. 2003a), Christian Arabs are

largely made invisible because of the bright

boundaries (Alba 2005) between “Christian” and

“Arab.” Therefore, I utilize Christian Arab Amer-

icans, who pass as “white” Americans despite

their Arab cultural heritage and ethnic status, as

a comparison group to Muslim Arab Americans

to approximate the role of religious minorities’

religiosity in the stress process model.

In the American context, where Islam is mar-

ginalized and Christianity is the hegemonic reli-

gion (Cesari 2016), practicing Islam likely has dif-

ferent meanings and implications for Muslim Arab

Americans than Christianity does for Christian

Arab Americans. In a post-9/11 America, Muslim

Arab Americans are notably more concerned

about mainstream perceptions of their faith

and also have increased perceptions of vulnerabil-

ity compared to Christian Arab Americans

(Baker et al. 2003b). Research also demonstrates

increases in Muslim religious engagement and dis-

criminatory experiences following a terrorist

attack (Liepyte and McAloney-Kocaman 2015).

Precisely because of Islam’s greater salience in

an Islamophobic America, I argue that the stress-

buffering role of religiosity will still manifest for

Muslims with more religious engagement. Like-

wise, the lack of religious engagement could exac-

erbate the relationship between discrimination and

distress. Extant research indicates that nonpractic-

ing Muslims have poorer health outcomes compared

to practicing Muslims (Wilhelm et al. 2018). How-

ever, different approaches to religiosity yield differ-

ing results. For example, in a study on New Zealand

immigrant Muslim women, religious practice buff-

ered the effect of discrimination on well-being, but

psychological affiliation (e.g., pride, belongingness,

and centrality) with Islam exacerbated the effect

(Jasperse, Ward, and Jose 2012).

The general social and psychological benefits

of religion were cited above (see “The Stress Pro-

cess Model and Religious Coping”). Here, I focus

on specific ways in which Islam may confer ben-

efits to regularly engaged Muslims. For Muslims

who regularly attend religious services, we can

expect that in addition to social and material

resources (e.g., networks and support, divine pres-

ence, etc.), they may also benefit from the reli-

gious service itself. In accordance with prophetic

tradition, Friday congregational prayer service

(jumma) includes two sermons: The first focuses


on a religious teaching, while the second often

uses that religious teaching to frame a current

sociopolitical situation—an especially important

element for immigrant Muslims in the American

context (Hashem 2010). In this way, Muslim con-

gregants are supplied with theological “tools”

(Bartkowski and Read 2003) with which to

approach stressful situations. These tools may

even transform their perspective of stressful expe-

riences as “tests from God” required for Muslims

to experience to be rewarded in the next life. For

example, the following verse from the Quran

(2:155) highlights the reward of patiently enduring

danger and deprivation—arguably intensely

stressful situations: “Be sure God shall test you

with fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives

or the fruits of your toil, but give glad tidings to

those who patiently persevere.” A later verse in

the same chapter (2:214) highlights the necessity

of stressful experiences in attaining divine reward

but also reassures believers that divine assistance

is readily available:

Do you think that you shall enter Heaven

without such trials as came to those who

passed away before you? They encountered

suffering and adversity, and were so shaken

in faith that even the Messenger of God and

those of faith who were with the Messenger

cried: “When will the help of God come?”

Ah! Verily, the help of God is always near!

While the Bible has similar verses,1 I argue that the

context of Islamophobia makes Islam (and the

Quran) more salient for Muslim Arab Americans

than Christianity (and the Bible) is for Christian

Arab Americans. Thus, mirroring black-white dif-

ferences in religious buffering, I expect to find reli-

gion buffers the effect of discrimination on distress

for respondents who regularly engage in religiosity

(Hypothesis 1) and that this effect is only pro-

nounced for Muslim respondents (Hypothesis 2).

METHODOLOGY

Data and Sample

The Detroit Arab American Study Team, based

out of the University of Michigan, conducted the

DAAS in the Detroit metro area (DMA) between

July and December 2003 (for data collection and

sampling details, see Baker et al. 2003a). This

unique data set includes, among other measures,

items for distress, discrimination, and religiosity,

including frequency of religious service atten-

dance, God salience, and salient religious practi-

ces. The original data set includes 1,016 cases;

after data cleansing, I retained 977 respondents

of Christian (N = 566) and Muslim (N = 411) reli-

gious affiliation.

This survey purposely targeted individuals of

Arab and Chaldean background and is representa-

tive of Arab Americans in the DMA—though not

nationally, as members of the DAAS team point

out (Abdulrahim and Baker 2009). The

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

(2009) defines Arab Americans as Americans

that originate from any the following 22 Arab

countries, and I italicize the countries from which

the DAAS respondents hail: Algeria, Bahrain, the

Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan,

Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania,

Oman, historic Palestine or the present occupied

territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan,

Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and

Yemen. The majority of the respondents are of Iraqi

or Lebanese origin; however, regardless of origin,

respondents largely identified as “Arab American”

(Baker et al. 2003a), which is not surprising given

the anti-colonial pan-Arab ethos both within and

outside the Arab world (Ajrouch 2004; Shah et al.

2017). The Christian sample includes respondents

identifying as Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox

Christian, while the Muslim sample includes

respondents identifying as Sunni and Shia; however,

for the purpose of the current analysis comparing

minority-majority religious affiliation, within-group

sectarian differences are not considered.

Variables

Distress. The dependent variable distress was

derived using the Kessler distress index (K-10;

Kessler and Mroczek 1992). Each of the 10 symp-

tom questions ranged from 1 (none of the time) to

5 (all of the time). The scores were summed,

resulting in a scale (a = .87) ranging from 10 to

50. The scale was recoded such that those who

scored 15 or below were coded as experiencing

no or low distress (0), those who scored between

16 and 29 were coded as experiencing medium

distress (1), and those who scored 30 or above

were coded as experiencing high distress (2)

(Andrews and Slade 2001). While distress as an

index was not normally distributed, the recoded

Shah 177

ordinal distress variable has a skewness of –.19,

and the kurtosis is 4.06, indicating moderate

skewness and kurtosis. The mean of this measure,

which ranges from 0 to 2, is 1.09, with the major-

ity of respondents (76 percent) indicating a distress

score of medium distress (1). The use of the dis-

tress index recoded as an ordinal measure has pre-

viously been employed by others utilizing the

DAAS (cf. Samari 2016). All findings presented

in the following sections provide cumulative

odds ratios comparing high distress to medium

and no or low distress, but it is important to

note that as cumulative odds, the same interpreta-

tion can also be made between high and medium

distress to no or low distress.

Discrimination. The focal independent vari-

able, discrimination, was measured through five

dichotomous questions (0 = no, 1 = yes) on

whether the respondents or members of their

household experienced any of the following due

to race, ethnicity, or religion: (1) verbal insults

or abuse, (2) threatening words or gestures, (3)

physical attack, (4) vandalism or destruction of

property, and (5) loss of employment. Respond-

ents were specifically asked about these experien-

ces in the two years preceding the study; in effect,

the items measured experiences since 2001, the

year of the terrorist attacks and subsequent increase

in anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia in America.

The variable was dichotomized into no discrimina-

tion (0) and at least one type of discrimination (1).

The internal consistency of this index was low (a =

.65), given that the scale includes fewer than 10

items; however, this index was used by previous

studies leveraging the DAAS (cf. Abdulrahim

et al. 2012; Aprahamian et al. 2011).

Religion. The DAAS offers a constellation of

measures for different aspects of religion, includ-

ing religious affiliation and three measures of reli-

giosity. These three measures include frequency

of religious service attendance, God salience,

and salient religious practices. Religious affilia-

tion was dichotomized into Christian (0) and Mus-

lim (1). Religious service attendance measured

how frequently respondents attended church or

mosque services and was recoded into an ordinal

variable ranging from not often (0; omitted),

monthly (1), or weekly or more (2). God salience

was measured by a single question, “How impor-

tant is God in your life?,” with possible responses

ranging from not at all important (1) to very

important (10). Because the overwhelming major-

ity (87.82 percent) of respondents in the DAAS

indicated that God was very important in their

lives, the first 9 responses were collapsed to create

a dichotomy such that God was either not very

important (low God salience = 0) or very impor-

tant (high God salience = 1). Salient religious

practice was an additive index (a = .96) derived

from 10 items asking respondents, “Is it important

to you to make a point of doing any of the follow-

ing things?” Respondents could indicate whether

the following practices were important, and poten-

tial responses were specific for Christian and

Muslim respondents, respectively: (1) attending

church on Sunday or Friday prayers, (2) reading

the Bible or the Quran regularly, (3) giving charity

(tithing or zakat), (4) sending children to religious

education classes, (5) praying daily, (6) marrying

an adherent of one’s faith, (7) fasting, (8) dressing

modestly or wearing hijab, (9) wearing a religious

symbol, and (10) telling others about one’s faith.

Responses represent a count of salient religious

practices ranging from 0, reflecting respondents

who indicated none of the practices were impor-

tant, to 10, reflecting respondents who indicated

all the practices were important. Unlike God

salience, salient religious practice was more nor-

mally distributed (albeit skewed towards higher

salience) and therefore retained as a continuous

measure.

I retain the three measures of religiosity as sep-

arate indicators rather than collapsing them into

one index for three reasons. First, collapsing meas-

ures of religiosity would preclude comparability

with other studies (Schieman et al. 2013). Second,

it would also obscure the role of different forms of

religiosity—a subject still in need of investigation

as not all forms of religiosity confer the same ben-

efits. Notably, the inclusion of the salient religious

practice measure is a remarkable feature of the

DAAS. Frequency of religious service attendance

and God salience are commonly used measures

in sociological studies of religion; salient religious

practice is not. I argue that this latter measure taps

into a dimension of religiosity that the former two

do not, bringing us to the third and final reason for

not collapsing the three measures of religiosity:

The three items measure unique aspects of religi-

osity that are in fact not well correlated, producing

an index with low internal validity (a = .33). Fre-

quency of religious service attendance taps into

how often a respondent may engage in religious

practices via services, but it does not assess the


importance of attending those religious services.

Because congregants likely attend religious serv-

ices for a plethora of reasons that might not be

intrinsically oriented (e.g., habitual, family activ-

ity, community expectations, professional net-

working, etc.; cf. Allport and Ross 1967), a mea-

sure that indicates how intrinsically salient the

practice itself is would facilitate triangulation in

an analysis of religiosity. In other words, while

religious service attendance measures frequency

of religious behavior, the measures of salience

tap into the importance of religion and the divine.

Likewise, God salience measures how important

God is in one’s life, presumably measuring a divine

relationship transcending religion but not the

importance of practicing the religion itself. Instead,

salient religious practice measures the number of

organized and institutionalized religious practices

that respondents regard as important.

Controls. Multivariate analyses were adjusted

for a number of sociodemographic measures.

These control variables included age (continuous),

gender (dummy, male omitted), education

(dummy, high school or less omitted), income

(dummy series; 0 = not reported, omitted; 1 =

less than $30,000; 2 = $30,000–$75,000; 3 =

over $75,000), marital status (dummy, not married

omitted), skin tone (dummy, “medium to dark”

omitted), and work status (dummy series; 0 =

other, omitted; 1 = currently working; 2 = home-

maker; 3 = student). These controls were selected

based on theoretical relevance and presence in

extant studies investigating religious affiliation

that also utilize the DAAS dataset (Abdulrahim

and Baker 2009; Abdulrahim et al. 2012; Apraha-

mian et al. 2011; Assari and Lankarani 2017;

Samari 2016). Thus, some measures are included

even though they are insignificant across models

(e.g., skin tone).

Analytical Procedure

I began with descriptive statistics, calculated for

all variables and presented for the full sample as

well as split samples by religious affiliation. To

test the probability of distress according to dis-

criminatory experiences as moderated by religios-

ity, I employed multivariate ordered logistic

regression and present findings as cumulative

odds ratios. I utilized multivariate ordered logistic

regression because the outcome variable of

distress is an ordinal variable, with outcomes fol-

lowing a natural ordering of low to high symptoms

of distress. Additionally, I used the proportional

odds test to confirm that the effect of discrimina-

tion and religiosity measures were not signifi-

cantly different across the three different levels

of distress.

To test the two hypotheses, I ran the following

nested models. Specifically, Model 4 tested the

first hypothesis, that religiosity will buffer the

relationship between discrimination and distress,

while Model 5 tested the second hypothesis, that

religious minority status will moderate religious

buffering.

Model 1. Distress = a + b1discrimination +

controls.


b2religious affiliation + controls.


b2religious affiliation + b3religiosity +

controls.



b4discrimination 3 religiosity + controls.



b4discrimination 3 religiosity + b5discrim-

ination 3 affiliation + b6affilation 3 religi-

osity + b7discrimination 3 affiliation 3

religiosity + controls.

I repeated analyses of Models 3, 4, and 5 for each

of the three religiosity variables, namely, fre-

quency of religious service attendance, God

salience, and salient religious practices. If the

three-way interaction in Model 5 failed to be sig-

nificant, I repeated the aforementioned analyses

for Models 1 through 4 but split the sample by reli-

gious affiliation to see if and how the measures of

religiosity differentially moderated the effect of

discrimination on distress. I stress that the split

sample analyses provide findings that are theoret-

ically substantive for religious minority religiosity

but not statistically significant.

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics summarizing the sample

characteristics are presented in Table 1. The

majority of respondents (75.74 percent) reported

medium levels of distress symptoms; fewer

Shah 179

reported no or low levels (15.97 percent) or high

levels (8.29 percent). About a quarter of respond-

ents (24.97 percent) reported at least one kind of

discriminatory experience. There were slightly

more Christian (57.93 percent) than Muslim

(42.07 percent) respondents. Religious service

attendance had a bimodal distribution, with more

respondents reporting weekly (36.34 percent) or

infrequent (46.98 percent) attendance than

monthly attendance (16.68 percent). As noted pre-

viously, the majority of respondents reported high

God salience (87.82 percent). Salient religious

practice, a continuous variable, had a mean of

5.93, indicating a skew (midpoint = 4.5). Descrip-

tive statistics are also provided for Christian and

Muslim subsamples, with bivariate test results

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics.

All Respondents Christians Muslims

(N = 977) (N = 566) (N = 411)Bivariate

Mean SD N Percentage Mean SD N Percentage Mean SD N Percentage Testa

DistressNo or low 156 15.97 93 16.43 63 15.33Medium 740 75.74 433 76.50 307 74.70High 81 8.29 40 7.07 41 9.98

Discrimination *None reported 733 75.03 439 77.56 294 71.53At least one kind 244 24.97 127 22.44 117 28.47

Religious affiliationChristian 566 57.93 — — — —Muslim 411 42.07 — — — —

Religious service attendance ***Not often 459 46.98 168 29.68 291 70.80Monthly 163 16.68 116 20.49 47 11.44Weekly or more 355 36.34 282 49.82 73 17.76

God salience ***Not very important 119 12.18 91 16.08 28 6.81Very important 858 87.82 475 83.92 383 93.19

Religious practice salience 5.93 2.89 6.11 2.87 5.69 2.89 *Age 44.66 18.00 48.08 18.07 39.95 16.83 ***Sex **

Male 452 46.26 241 42.58 211 51.34Female 525 53.74 325 57.42 200 48.66

Education *High school or less 447 45.75 241 42.58 206 50.12.High school 530 54.25 325 57.42 205 49.88

Income ***Not reported 133 13.61 81 14.31 52 12.65\$30,000 309 31.63 133 23.50 176 42.82$30,000–$75,000 247 25.28 154 27.21 93 22.63.$75,000 288 29.48 198 34.98 90 21.90

Marital status ***Not married 276 28.25 182 32.16 94 22.87Married 701 71.75 384 67.84 317 77.13

Skin toneDark skin 496 50.77 282 49.82 214 52.07Light skin 481 49.23 284 50.18 197 47.93

Work status ***Other (unemployed,retired, disabled,laid off)

220 22.52 158 27.92 62 15.09

Currently working 518 53.02 296 52.30 222 54.01Homemaker 195 19.96 89 15.72 106 25.79Student 44 4.50 23 4.06 21 5.11

ax2 tests based on the pairwise cross-tabulation of the categorical variables by religious affiliation; two group meancomparison t tests used for continuous variables.*p \ .05. **p \ .01. ***p \ .001.


for significant differences between the religious

groups. As noted in previous research drawing

on the DAAS dataset, Muslim and Christian

respondents differ significantly on experience of

discrimination but not distress.

Turning to the multivariate regressions, I begin

with the results for frequency of religious service

attendance (Table 2), followed by God salience

and salient religious practices (Table 3). The first

model (Model 1, Table 2) shows the cumulative

odds ratio (OR) of distress on discrimination,

adjusting for sociodemographic factors. As

expected, and in line with previous research, for

respondents reporting discriminatory experiences,

the odds of high distress versus the combined

medium and low distress are 2.13 times higher

than for respondents reporting no discriminatory

experience (OR = 2.13, p \ .001). The second

model includes religious affiliation, which was

not significantly related to distress, again as

expected. The third and fourth models add reli-

gious service attendance and an interaction term

between attendance and discrimination, respec-

tively. Neither term was significant. When reli-

gious affiliation was added to the interaction

term in Model 5, however, the three-way interac-

tion was modestly significant (p \ .10; Model

5), such that higher frequency of religious service

attendance for Muslims buffered the effect of dis-

criminatory experiences on distress. In other

words, compared to Christians, for Muslim

respondents who have experienced at least one

discriminatory experience, weekly or more fre-

quent religious service attendance buffered the

effect of discrimination on distress—though I

restate this effect was only modest.

For the total sample, God salience did not mod-

erate the effect of discrimination on distress, nor

was it significantly related to outcomes of distress.

Additionally, the three-way interaction between

discrimination, religious affiliation, and God

salience was not significant (not shown, results

available on request). The split sample analysis,

however, demonstrates that God salience buffered

discrimination for Muslim (p\ .05) but not Chris-

tian respondents (Models 2 and 3, Table 3).

The cumulative odds ratios for Muslim respon-

dent distress by discrimination and God salience is

presented in Figure 2. For Muslims who did not

report discriminatory experiences, those reporting

low God salience reported 1.16 the odds of report-

ing high versus medium and no or low distress,

while those reporting high God salience reported

1.48 the odds. Thus, for Muslim respondents

who did not report discriminatory experiences,

the odds of reporting high distress are 1.27 times

greater for respondents reporting high God

salience than for low God salience—though this

difference is not statistically significant. However,

for Muslims reporting at least one discriminatory

experience, the ratio of the two odds drops to

.27: Those reporting low God salience reported

10.66 the odds of reporting high distress, while

those reporting high God salience reported just

2.87 the odds. Thus, while God salience does not

significantly impact outcomes of distress for

Muslim respondents reporting no discriminatory

experience, God salience significantly buffers

against the effect of discrimination on distress

for Muslims reporting at least one discriminatory

experience.

Turning to the final measure of religiosity, for

the overall sample, salient religious practices buff-

ered the effect of discrimination on distress, lend-

ing support to the first hypothesis (p \ .05; not

shown, results available on request). However,

the three-way interaction between discrimination,

religious affiliation, and salient religious practice

was not significant (not shown, results available

on request). In the split sample analysis (Models

4 and 5, Table 3), salient religious practices, like

God salience, buffered discrimination for Muslim

(p \ .05) but not Christian respondents. Figure 3

shows the interaction of salient religious practice

and discriminatory experience for outcomes of

distress as cumulative logged odds.

As illustrated, the odds of reporting high dis-

tress versus medium and no or low distress by

Muslim respondents reporting no discriminatory

experiences was not greatly changed by levels of

salient religious practices. In terms of cumulative

odds ratios, for Muslim respondents who did not

report discriminatory experiences, those reporting

no salient religious practices reported 1.08 the

odds of reporting high distress, while those report-

ing the maximum 10 salient religious practices

reported 1.10 the odds. Thus, for respondents

who did not report discriminatory experiences,

the odds of reporting high distress are 1.02 times

greater for respondents reporting high salient reli-

gious practice than for no salient practice—though

this difference is not statistically significant. How-

ever, for Muslim respondents reporting a discrimi-

natory experience, the ratio of the two odds was

.81. Those reporting no salient practices reported

10.41 the odds of reporting high distress, while

Shah 181

those reporting all 10 salient religious practices

reported 8.39 the odds. While the protective effect

of salient religious practice is markedly less than

God salience, religious practice is nonetheless

a significant buffer against discrimination on

distress.

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) if

religious resources would buffer the effect of dis-

crimination on distress for Arab Americans and

(2) if that relationship would differ based on reli-

gious minority status. The results indicate that reli-

gious service attendance modestly moderates dis-

crimination for Muslim respondents compared to

Christian respondents, but this effect was insignif-

icant for within-group comparisons by discrimina-

tory experience (e.g., the split sample analyses).

For the overall sample, only salient religious prac-

tices buffered discrimination. However, when reli-

gious affiliation was taken into account, the results

indicate that this effect was only present for Mus-

lim respondents. Similarly, God salience signifi-

cantly moderates only Muslim discriminatory

experiences.

The utility of religiosity in buffering Muslim

but not Christian Arab American distress may

reflect the marginalization of Islam vis-a-vis

Christianity in America. As discussed previously,

religion can be beneficial for the mental health

of “groups that have traditionally held less objec-

tive power in secular affairs” (Schieman et al.

2013:464)—in this case, Muslims as a religious

minority. Notably, the results of this study—that

religiosity buffered discrimination for Muslims

but not Christians—mirror racial minority patterns

of black-white differences for Christian samples.

Table 2. Multivariate Ordered Logistic Regression as Cumulative Odds Ratios of Distress onDiscrimination and Attendance, Full Sample (N = 977).

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

1. Discrimination 2.133*** 2.12*** 2.139*** 2.128** 1.542. Muslim 1.103 1.035 1.036 .631y

3. Religious service attendance(not often omitted)Monthly .811 .857 .56y

Weekly or more .87 .846 .553*4. Discrimination 3 religious service attendance

Monthly .825 1.008Weekly or more 1.137 2.005

5. Discrimination 3 Muslim 1.7276. Muslim 3 religious service attendance

Monthly 2.792y

Weekly or more 3.26*7. Discrimination 3 Muslim 3

religious service attendanceMonthly .651Weekly or more .202y

8. Age .99* .991y .991y .99y .991y

9. Female .981 .995 1.001 1.001 1.03510. Education .942 .944 .945 .947 .95911. Income (not reported at omitted)

\$30,000 1.406 1.386 1.383 1.38 1.385$30,000–$75,000 1.004 1.012 1.011 1.01 .98.$75,000 1.067 1.08 1.081 1.081 1.072

12. Married .799 .791 .796 .802 .79613. Light skin 1.02 1.022 1.007 1.006 1.02114. Work status (other as omitted)

Currently working .595* .591* .593* .587* .564**Homemaker .65 .637y .63y .622y .634y

Student .367* .364* .371* .369* .352*Likelihood ratio x2 34.53*** 34.89*** 35.99** 36.4* 45.42*–2 log likelihood –676 –676 –676 –675 –671df 12 13 15 17 22

yp \ .10. *p \ .05. **p \ .01. ***p \ .001.


Tab

le3.

Multiv

aria

teO

rder

edLo

gist

icR

egre

ssio

nas

Cum

ula

tive

Odds

Rat

ios

of

Dis

tres

son

Dis

crim

inat

ion

and

Rel

igio

us

Salie

nce

.

Chri

stia

nR

esponden

ts(N

=566)

Musl

imR

esponden

ts(N

=411)

Model

1M

odel

2M

odel

3M

odel

4M

odel

5M

odel

1M

odel

2M

odel

3M

odel

4M

odel

5

1.D

iscr

imin

atio

n2.0

82**

2.1

00**

2.2

31

2.0

55**

2.4

87

1.9

41*

1.9

47*

15.0

09**

2.0

12*

8.2

58***

2.G

od

salie

nce

.796

.808

.608

1.2

66

3.D

iscr

imin

atio

n3

God

salie

nce

.930

.111*

4.Sa

lient

relig

ious

pra

ctic

e1.0

16

1.0

20

.961

1.0

20

5.D

iscr

imin

atio

n3

salie

nt

relig

ious

pra

ctic

e.9

71

.790*

6.A

ge.9

87y

.988y

.988y

.988y

.988y

.995

.994

.995

.994

.993

7.Fe

mal

e.6

79y

.690y

.690y

.672y

.673y

2.0

38*

2.0

97*

2.0

46*

2.0

80*

2.1

68**

8.Educa

tion

.780

.764

.764

.791

.793

1.3

15

1.2

68

1.3

08

1.3

05

1.3

56

9.In

com

e(n

ot

repo

rted

atom

itte

d)

\$30,0

00

1.8

13y

1.8

22y

1.8

23y

1.7

90

1.7

94

1.3

28

1.3

19

1.2

86

1.3

18

1.3

65

$30,0

00–$75,0

00

.728

.719

.718

.729

.730

2.0

29y

1.9

98y

2.0

61y

2.0

19y

2.0

27y

.$75,0

00

1.2

02

1.1

64

1.1

61

1.2

04

1.2

02

.889

.847

.784

.879

.837

10.M

arri

ed.5

09**

.511**

.510**

.502**

.502**

1.9

49*

2.0

32*

2.1

56**

1.9

97*

1.9

21*

11.Li

ght

skin

1.1

27

1.1

24

1.1

26

1.1

34

1.1

40

.832

.828

.761

.814

.818

12.W

ork

stat

us

(oth

eras

om

itte

d)

Curr

ently

work

ing

.620y

.618y

.619y

.623

.624

.436*

.430*

.409*

.437*

.406*

Hom

emak

er1.0

20

1.0

18

1.0

20

1.0

23

1.0

27

.217***

.213***

.204***

.222***

.199***

Studen

t.4

17

.410

.411

.419

.423

.242*

.252*

.258*

.247*

.252*

Like

lihood

ratio

x2

41.6

9***

42.3

6***

42.3

8***

41.8

8***

41.9

7***

31.5

0**

32.5

7**

37.9

2***

32.4

7**

38.9

1***

–2

log

likel

ihood

–369.0

8–368.7

5–368.7

4–368.9

9–368.9

4–286.4

7–285.9

4–283.2

7–285.9

9–282.7

7df

12

13

14

13

14

12

13

14

13

14

yp

\.1

0;*p

\.0

5;**p

\.0

1;***p

\.0

01.

183

Racial differences in religious buffering are

largely explained by researchers as the historical

and contemporary role African American churches

and religious congregations play in fighting dis-

crimination while providing support and solidarity

to congregants. While an institutional explanation

is parsimonious, it lacks the nuance that would

explain differences observed for other statuses,

including religious minorities who have not

experienced the same history of religious institu-

tions engaged in social justice–oriented collective

movements. Instead, I argue that the underlying

social inequality prompts two mechanisms: that

religion itself becomes more salient for marginal-

ized populations while religious institutions

become mobilized as access points to resources—

material, social, and psychological. This aligns

with theoretical claims that sociopolitical context

Figure 2. Cumulative odds ratios of high distress by God salience and discrimination for Muslim onlysample.

Figure 3. Logged odds of distress by salient religious practices and discrimination for Muslim only sample.


shapes both the meaning of religiosity and stres-

sors, in turn shaping mental health outcomes (Bier-

man 2010; McLeod 2012; Schieman et al. 2013).

Religious service attendance modestly moder-

ated discrimination for Muslim respondents com-

pared to Christian respondents. This may be

because of the difference in religious centrality

for the two groups: In an analysis of their own

data, the DAAS research team identified church

attendance as central to Christian religious prac-

tice, while daily prayer and fasting were central

to Muslim religious practice (Baker et al. 2003b,

2009). In a chi-square test (not shown, available

on request), compared to Muslims, Christians

were significantly more likely to report more fre-

quent attendance of religious services (p \.001). It may be that Muslims who attend religious

services more frequently attach special meaning to

those services, which in turn amplifies the benefi-

cial effects of religion as a resource. Unlike Chris-

tians, Muslim Arab Americans are forced to con-

tend with heightened public scrutiny of both

Muslims and mosques (Baker et al. 2009). Also

unlike Christians, Muslims who do attend reli-

gious services more frequently would need to

exert additional effort to attend: The timing

Muslims usually congregate for jumma prayers

(Friday at solar noon) interferes with the conven-

tional workweek, unlike Christian Sunday mass.

Furthermore, Baker and colleagues (2009) demon-

strate that religious commitment and religious ser-

vice attendance can structure attitudes about dis-

crimination against Arab Americans differently

between Christian and Muslim DAAS respond-

ents. Religious service attendance can increase

Muslim participation in protest demonstrations,

an avenue for Muslims to voice dissatisfaction

with their sociopolitical context (Baker et al.

2009; Jamal 2005). Having a voice may also foster

a sense of agency, or mastery, a notable resource

that benefits mental health status (Ross and Mir-

owsky 2013). As religious institutions, Detroit’s

mosques and churches also function differently

for Muslims and Christians. Dearborn’s Islamic

Center of America,2 the largest mosque in Amer-

ica (Norris 2005), offers many services, including

counseling. While Coptic churches in Michigan3

do offer opportunities to meet with deacons, they

do not specify counseling as an available service.

Mosques and Muslim communities notably orga-

nize such services to meet congregants’ mental

health and counseling needs, since Muslim Arab

Americans may feel that health care professionals

are not adequately trained to recognize and under-

stand their unique experiences (Haque 2004; see

also Jamal 2005).

Similar to religious service attendance, reli-

gious salience as beneficial for Muslim but not

Christian respondents may reflect Muslims’ reli-

gious minority status. Rather than arguing a reli-

gious-based explanation (that Islam benefits Mus-

lims over Christians), I argue that marginalized

groups—either racial or religious—benefit from

religious resources. As a social institution that pro-

vides existential meaning for believers, religion

appears to provide a set of beliefs with which to

understand, process, or even transform the psycho-

logical consequences of discrimination. This may

be why qualitative studies comparing Muslim

and Christian samples, particularly in the post-9/

11 American context, have found that religion is

a more flexible resource for Muslims compared

to Christians—a kind of versatile “Swiss army

knife” rather than a “crescent wrench” (Bartkow-

ski and Read 2003; see also Ali et al. 2008).

Thus, even though Muslims and Christians experi-

ence similar religious-based meaning-making pro-

cesses (Beekers 2014), the utility of religion

across multiple areas of social life is markedly dif-

ferent given religious minority status.

A context where both Muslim and Christian

religiosities are marginalized may help underscore

the stress-buffering effects of religion for religious

minorities. For example, in the occupied Palesti-

nian territories, where Israeli policies allot prefer-

ential treatment to Jews over Muslims and Chris-

tians, the latter two are likely to experience the

salutary effects of religiosity over Jewish adher-

ents. Comparing Muslim to Christian Palestinians,

Christians would likely experience differential

benefits given their (Christian) religious minority

status within the (Arab) racial minority group. In

a comparison of Muslim and Christian Palesti-

nians, Kakounda and Israelashvilli (2015) found

that religiosity was negatively associated with sui-

cidal ideation for Christians but not Muslims.

However, given the specific meaning suicidal ide-

ation may have for Muslim Palestinians, some of

whom positively view sacrificing one’s life as

a form of religiously sanctioned resistance (i.e.,

jihad) against occupiers, additional mental health

outcomes should be utilized (for a discussion on

cross-cultural studies of the stress process model,

see also Schieman et al. 2013).

The foregoing analyses have a number of lim-

itations. Given the cross-sectional design of the

Shah 185

data, the relationships I investigated are necessar-

ily correlational and not causal. Without longitudi-

nal data, the causal mechanisms between distress,

discrimination, and religiosity are difficult to

assess. Another limitation of this study is the

lack of direct measures of religious coping, such

as items from the Brief Arab Religious Coping

Scale, including, “When I am experiencing

a stressful situation, I pray to get my mind off

my problems” (Amer et al. 2008). In the absence

of direct measures, I offer approximations of reli-

gious practice and salience via three unique meas-

ures of religiosity. Finally, given the specific con-

text of this study, generalizing the findings of this

study beyond its bounds is not advised. Yet the

context of the study provides the ideal sample

for the goals of this project. Without a concentrated

sample naturally occurring in a geographically

bound survey, a robust comparison of Christian

and Muslim (e.g., majority and minority) religios-

ity would not have been possible. Additionally, the

findings of this study offer conceptual generaliza-

tions for religious minority religiosity, demon-

strating the necessity of treating religiosity with

more nuance than in previous studies on Muslim

Americans.

I propose three additional avenues for research

that draw on religion as dynamic in investigations

of mental health; these proposed investigations

can be undertaken using any data set that has

measures of mental health, religiosity, and socio-

demographics. First, discrimination could be

parsed out to differentiate between variances of

experience. In line with previous research utilizing

the DAAS discrimination measures (Abdulrahim

et al. 2012; Aprahamian et al. 2011), I combined

all five measures of discrimination into one

dichotomous variable. However, Baker and col-

leagues (2009) identify two types of harassment;

one includes nonphysical violence (e.g., verbal

insults) while the other includes physical violence

(e.g., vandalism). Religious resources may pre-

sumably be more beneficial for nonphysical

harassment, where the damage is primarily psy-

chosocial and not material or physical.

A second avenue for research includes assess-

ing the “dark side of religion”—namely, of reli-

gious struggles (Ellison and Lee 2010). Muslim

Americans who do not engage in religiosity may

have poorer mental health outcomes compared to

their religiously engaged counterparts, especially

for those experiencing discrimination, as demon-

strated in this study. Without theologically based

tools to understand and process discriminatory

experiences, less religiously engaged Muslims

may experience religious doubt, resulting in reli-

gious cognitive dissonance (Hill et al. 2017).

Divine struggles, one of three general dimensions

of religious struggles, may become exacerbated as

Muslim Americans experience discrimination, in

turn increasing distress. In other words, less reli-

giously engaged Muslims who experience dis-

crimination because of their religion may question

their adherence to the faith, triggering an existen-

tial crisis and therefore, distress.

The final avenue for research is reassessing the

data by interrogating social categories. I propose

two ways of pursuing this avenue: The first is an

intersectional approach that would capture gender,

religious affiliation, and experiences of immigra-

tion, while the second approach would parse apart

ethnic and religious categories. Religion is gen-

dered (Bartkowski and Shah 2014) as some practi-

ces are more salient, relevant, and accessible for

certain expressions of gender than others (Mah-

mood 2005), and this also differs by religious affil-

iation (Baker et al. 2003b). Likewise, the religious

experience and dynamics of the Christian Arab

American community is likely to be different

from its much younger Muslim counterpart as

the DMA Arab Christian community formed sev-

eral generations before the Arab Muslim commu-

nity (Baker et al. 2009). Discriminatory experien-

ces for new immigrants, particularly Muslims,

may have different outcomes than the same kinds

of experiences for older generations of immigrants

from the Christian community, and this relation-

ship would likely have gendered implications

(Ajrouch 2004). To illustrate this dynamic, center-

ing the experiences of those at intersecting identi-

ties (Collins 1991), being physically attacked

because of one’s race, ethnicity, or religion would

have varying psychological consequences for

a newly arrived Muslim woman, particularly if

she donned hijab, compared to a white-passing

Christian man.

In the second approach, ethnic and religious

categories would be further interrogated. Although

I consider respondents solely by religious affilia-

tion, I note that the sample is diverse by ethnicity

and sectarian affiliation. Additionally, researchers

have investigated skin tone and whiteness of Arab

Americans (Abdulrahim et al. 2012; Ajrouch and

Kusow 2007); these factors may impact the

respondents’ exposure to discrimination and dif-

ferential experience of discrimination and thus


outcomes of discrimination. Likewise, Arab Amer-

icans might hail from nearly two dozen Arab coun-

tries, listed previously. Each of these countries has

a unique history of development and colonization,

creating specific social milieus respondents may

have exposure to, especially when regional varia-

tion and minority status are taken into account.

Complicating this further is respondent generation

of immigration and attachment to their countries

of origin. These factors should be assessed, as treat-

ing Arab Americans as a monolithic category can

obfuscate the effect of country of origin, skin

tone, or additional social markers.

Likewise, the effect of respondent religious

sectarian affiliation may be masked by treating

the categories as simply “Muslim” or “Christian.”

Focusing on the former, the largest divide in the

Muslim world is recognized as the Shia-Sunni

schism, but in reality, there are divisions even

within these sects. While Muslims acknowledge

there may be as many as 73 sects based on Pro-

phetic tradition (Khaki 2013), the actual number

of sects remains unknown as groups are constantly

forming, reforming, and dividing. Focusing on the

larger Shia-Sunni divide, Muslims may differen-

tially interpret and experience stressful events,

like discrimination, based on religious ideologies

and teachings. For example, a common Shia

expression is, “Every day is Ashura, every land

is Karbala”—a reference to the brutal events that

befell the Prophet’s family in 680 A.D., but which

can give contemporary Shias divine meaning of

their current day experiences of discrimination

and persecution (Mohsenian-Rahman 2017; Nasr

2006). In sum, these research avenues can help

parse out the social processes of religiosity in rela-

tion to mental health and if religiosity can buffer

certain stressors (e.g., situational) more effectively

than others (e.g., systemic).

In this study, I investigated if religious resour-

ces buffered the effect of discrimination on dis-

tress for Arab Americans and if that relationship

differed based on religious minority status. Fol-

lowing the contours of the stress process model,

I investigated how three separate measures of reli-

giosity buffered the discrimination-distress rela-

tionship. The results indicate that for the overall

sample, only salient religious practices buffered

discrimination. However, when religious affilia-

tion was taken into account, the results indicate

that both God salience and salient religious practi-

ces significantly moderated Muslim Arab Ameri-

can discrimination.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for

Society and Mental Health. I would also like to thank

Christopher Ellison, Xiaohe Xu, Scott Schieman, and

Blair Wheaton for their comments on earlier drafts of

this paper. A version of this paper was presented at the

Association for the Sociology of Religion Annual Meet-

ing (Denver, Colorado) and the International Stress Con-

ference Biannual Meeting (Vancouver, British Columbia).

NOTES

1. Compare, for example, the similarity of prescriptive

prayer in times of crisis: James 5:13, “Is anyone

among you in trouble? Let them pray,” and Quran

13:28, “Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts

find rest!” I argue that the religious texts are not sub-

stantively different (though others may disagree; cf.

Franzmann 2010) but that social contexts of inequal-

ity increase the salience of religious resources,

including scriptures, for marginalized groups.

2. For more information, see www.icofa.com.

3. For more information, see www.copticchurch.net/

topics/directory/churches_all.php.

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