Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Evidence on the nature of sectarian animosity from a geographically representative survey of Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 1226–1233 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Sectarian tensions underlie conflicts across the Middle East, but little is known about their roots and associated beliefs. We conducted a large-scale empirical analysis, drawing on an original, geographically representative survey of over 4,000 devout Shiites across Iran and Iraq. We find that sectarian animosity is linked to economic deprivation, political disillusionment, lack of out-group contact and a sect-based view of domestic politics—paralleling patterns seen in ethno-nationalism elsewhere. In contrast, two alternative accounts are largely unsupported: sectarian animosity is not consistently associated with solidarity with a transnational sect-based community, nor does it seem to stem from disputes over religious doctrine. Nonetheless, this identity’s religious roots manifest in differences from typical ethno-nationalism; practising men are less sectarian, consistent with official doctrine encouraging unity, whereas practising women are more sectarian. These gendered patterns suggest an understudied mechanism: religiously mediated socialization, or the transmission of non-religious norms through religious practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Testing theorized drivers of sectarian animosity among Iraqi respondents.
Fig. 2: Testing theorized drivers of sectarian animosity among Iranian respondents.
Fig. 3: Worldviews associated with sectarian animosity, by gender.

Data availability

The replication data are available via CodeOcean at https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.1650288.v1.

Code availability

Reproducible code and third-party verified results are available via CodeOcean at https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.1650288.v1.

References

  1. Matthiesen, T. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford Univ. Press, 2013).

  2. Abdo, G. The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi’a–Sunni Divide (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016).

  3. Caryl, C. Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century (Marshall Poe, New Books in History, 2013).

  4. Nasr, V. The Shia Revival (W. W. Norton, 2016).

  5. Khoury, D. R. The security state and the practice and rhetoric of sectarianism in Iraq. Int. J. Contemp. Iraqi Stud. 4, 325–338 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Haddad, F. Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011).

  7. Cammett, M. & Luong, P. J. Is there an Islamist political advantage? Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 17, 187–206 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. George, S. Millions of Shiites gather in Iraq’s Karbala for Arbaeen, AP News, 2 Dec 2015. https://apnews.com/article/fcb7d64aaf724877877cb5ca62dfe19b (Accessed on 7 May 2022).

  9. Horowitz, D. L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Univ. of California Press, 2000).

  10. Petersen, R. D. Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002).

  11. Fearon, J. D. & Laitin, D. D. Violence and the social construction of ethnic identity. Int. Organ. 54, 845–877 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Mir-Hosseini, Z. Debating Women: Gender and the Public Sphere in Post-Revolutionary Iran in Civil Society in Comparative Muslim Contexts (ed. Sajoo, A.) (I.B. Tauris and Institute of Ismaili Studies, 95–122 (2002).

  13. Koolaee, E. Iranian women from private sphere to public sphere, with focus on Parliament. Iran Caucus 13, 401–414 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kucinskas, J. A research note on Islam and gender egalitarianism: an examination of Egyptian and Saudi Arabian youth attitudes. J. Sci. Study Relig. 49, 761–770 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Scheible, J. & Fleischmann, F. Gendering Islamic religiosity in the second generation: gender differences in religious practices and the association with gender ideology among Moroccan- and Turkish-Belgian Muslims. Gend. Soc. 27, 372–395 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Blaydes, L. State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (Princeton Univ. Press, 2018).

  17. Abdullah, S., Gray, T. & Clough, E. Clientelism: factionalism in the allocation of public resources in Iraq after 2003. Middle East. Stud. 54, 665–682 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Hamilton, A. The Political Economy of Economic Policy in Iraq LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series No. 32 (2020), LSE Middle East Centre, London, UK.

  19. Dekeyser, E. Islam, Exclusivity, and the State in France. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2019).

  20. Akerlof, G. A. & Kranton, R. E. Economics and identity. Q. J. Econ. 115, 715–753 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Al-Ali, N. Iraqi women and gender relations: redefining difference. Br. J. Middle East. Stud. 35, 405–418 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Allport, G. W., Clark, K. & Pettigrew, T. The Nature of Prejudice (1954), Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA.

  23. Pettigrew, T. F. Intergroup contact theory. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 49, 65–85 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Mabon, S. Saudi Arabia and Iran: Power and Rivalry in the Middle East Vol. 132 (IB Tauris, 2015).

  25. Allport, G. W. in The Self in Social Interaction: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives Vol. 1 (eds Gordon, C. & Gergen, K. J.) (John Wiley & Sons, 1968).

  26. Clingingsmith, D., Khwaja, A. I. & Kremer, M. Estimating the impact of the Hajj: religion and tolerance in Islam’s global gathering. Q. J. Econ. 124, 1133–1170 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Kalyvas, S. N. Ethnic defection in civil war. Comp. Polit. Stud. 41, 1043–1068 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Collier, P. & Hoeffler, A. Greed and grievance in civil war. Oxf. Econ. Pap. 56, 563–595 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Household Socio-economic Survey, Second Round (Iraq, 2012–2013): Living Standards Measurement Study (World Bank Development Data Group, 2013).

  30. Alkhatib, W. Iraq Public Opinion Survey Report, 2013/2014 (Arab Barometer III, 2014).

  31. Iraq Country Report (Arab Barometer IV, 2019).

  32. Tipping, M. & Bishop, C. Probabilistic principal component analysis. J. R. Stat. Soc. B 61, 611–622 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Pepinsky, T., Liddle, R., & Mujani, S. (2018-03-29). Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 7 May. 2022, from https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190697808.001.0001/oso-9780190697808

  34. Knox, D., Lucas, C. & Cho, W. K. T. Testing causal theories with learned proxies. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 25, 419–441 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Peterson, C. B., Bogomolov, M., Benjamini, Y. & Sabatti, C. Many phenotypes without many false discoveries: error controlling strategies for multitrait association studies. Genet. Epidemiol. 40, 45–56 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Simes, R. An improved Bonferroni procedure for multiple tests of significance. Biometrika 73, 751–754 (1986).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Benjamini, Y. & Hochberg, Y. Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J. R. Stat. Soc. B 57, 289–300 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

For support in the field, we thank A. Hammadi, A. A. Y. Al-Kufi (Kufa University president) and H. Nadhem (Kufa University professor). We also thank our survey supervisors F. K. Hasan, M. H. Machi, W. A. Kadhim, F. N. Harram and N. J. Gdhadab and our enumerator team. For advice on surveying in Iraq, we thank A. Jamal and M. Robbins, who generously shared their experience from the Arab Barometer; N. Krishnan, for sharing the instruments and data from the World Bank household economic survey for Iraq; and N. Sahgal, for discussing her experience with the work of the Pew Research Center in Iraq. We thank R. Mottahedeh, S. Mervin and G. Chatelard for early input on the project and M. Alshamary and R. Shaikh for research assistance. F.C. carried out the data collection associated with this project while on an Andrew Carnegie fellowship. She also acknowledges support from ARO MURI (award no. W911NF-121-0509). D.K. acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. 1122374). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Fotini Christia

    Present address: Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

  2. Elizabeth Dekeyser is an independent researcher.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Fotini Christia & Elizabeth Dekeyser

  2. Operations, Information, and Decisions Department, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dean Knox

Authors
  1. Fotini Christia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Elizabeth Dekeyser
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Dean Knox
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

F.C. collected the data. E.D. and D.K. analysed the data. F.C., E.D. and D.K. wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Fotini Christia, Elizabeth Dekeyser or Dean Knox.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Human Behaviour thanks Justin Gengler, Don van Ravenzwaaij and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–6, Tables 1–21 and Figs. 1–7.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Christia, F., Dekeyser, E. & Knox, D. Evidence on the nature of sectarian animosity from a geographically representative survey of Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims. Nat Hum Behav 6, 1226–1233 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01358-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01358-y

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing