Is governmental and societal discrimination against Muslim minorities behind foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq?

Abstract

This study asks whether governmental and societal discrimination against Muslim minorities explains the outflow of foreign fighters from non-Muslim-majority countries to Syria and Iraq. We use data from the ICSR, Soufan Group, Pokalova (2018), and RASM datasets to examine the connection between discrimination directed at Muslim minorities and the number of foreign fighters originating in a country. We apply grievance-based theory to examine whether minority-specific objective discrimination is behind the phenomenon. We find little evidence that discrimination increases the outflow of foreign fighters, but this outflow is higher from wealthier countries. The findings indicate that if grievances are a motivation for individuals to become foreign fighters, they are not connected to objective discrimination. This implies that at least some of the grievances relate to personal circumstances or that immigrant minorities are more likely to perceive inequality in wealthier countries.

Keywords

discrimination foreign fighters grievances Muslim minorities

Introduction

The phenomenon of fighters leaving their homes and joining foreign wars is attracting increasing attention, especially considering the influx of fighters who have voluntarily joined the current wars in Syria and Iraq. Throughout history foreign fighters have joined various conflicts around the globe. In recent years, global jihad organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have attracted volunteers from across the Muslim world, calling them to fight those perceived as enemies of Islam. Indeed, the foreign fighters joining the war arenas in Syria and Iraq originate in more than 100 countries and their numbers already exceeded the rates of foreign fighters in any other war in the past 20 years (Crawford & Koran, 2015). Recent scholarship is beginning to address various aspects of this widening phenomenon, including its causes and characteristics and the effects of foreign fighters, relating to the dangers they pose both in the combat zones and in their countries of origin on their return home.

Although most Muslim foreign fighters originate in Muslim-majority countries, this literature pays special attention to fighters from Western countries. Many ask why people choose to leave their homes in countries where personal welfare and security are among the highest in the world, and travel to areas afflicted by human suffering and war. One of the main explanations offered by empirical studies on foreign fighters’ motivations is a sectarian (Sunni) ideology that combines norms of Muslim solidarity and hostility toward the West (Hegghammer, 2013b: 4). Another prevalent explanation of the causes of foreign fighting is sectarian grievances of Muslims who feel that their group experiences discrimination which causes suffering, depression, and alienation in their home countries (Coolsaet, 2015). Recent studies also link political and economic grievances with the motivation to become foreign fighters (Dur-e-Aden, 2016; Weggemans, Bakker & Grol, 2014), though the empirical findings on this link, as we present below, are inconclusive. However, none of the cross-national studies use variables specific to Muslims in order to test these propositions and rather, use country-level indicators. Thus, they assume that a country’s level of unemployment, for example, represents deprivation for its Muslim minority.

The purpose of this study is to examine the question of whether discrimination directed specifically against Muslim minorities is behind the phenomenon of foreign fighters originating from non-Muslim-majority countries. Drawing on the extensive literature on discrimination, grievances, and political violence, we examine whether there is a link between levels of governmental and societal discrimination directed against Muslim minorities and the number of foreign fighters originating from a country. That is, we use measures of discrimination which are minority-specific to Muslims rather than country-level indicators.

To this end, we use three datasets that provide numbers of foreign fighters from non-Muslim countries who joined the wars in Syria and Iraq between 2011 and 2015 – the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR), the Soufan Group, and Pokalova (2018). We examine these data against a wide range of measures of governmental and societal religious discrimination directed against Muslim minorities taken from the Religion and State-Minorities Round 3 (RASM3) dataset. To our knowledge, the RASM3 dataset provides the only cross-country indicator of discrimination that is specific to Muslim minorities. While the actual figures of foreign fighters in these and other sources vary, and although we do not know how many of them actually engaged in the fighting, there are consistent estimates of the rates of volunteering fighters. For robustness checks, we examine the effect of governmental and societal discrimination on data on foreign fighter measures from each of the three sources separately. We find that discrimination targeted at Muslim minorities does not explain the number of fighters originating from that country. However, we find that when accounting for other factors, foreign fighters are more likely to originate from wealthier countries.

The next section reviews the literature on discrimination, grievances, and political violence. This is followed by a review of the literature on driving forces behind foreign fighters, notably the discussion on the connection between grievances and the motivation to volunteer for foreign wars. After this we present the research design and analysis of the results on the relationship between levels of discrimination and numbers of foreign fighters. Finally, we present the conclusions of our analysis regarding the explanations for the extensive phenomenon of Muslim foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Discrimination and grievances

The increase in the number of internal and transnational conflicts involving non-state actors in the latter decades of the 20th century has resulted in numerous studies on the motivation of groups and individuals to engage in political violence. Discrimination and grievance-based models have been widely used in scholarly works to explain political violence.

In his seminal book, Why Men Rebel, Gurr (1970) examined the role of a frustration–aggression mechanism in stirring political protest and rebellion. While frustration does not inevitably produce violence, according to Gurr (1970: 36), when it is sufficiently severe it often leads to violent outbursts of anger. The assumption behind this premise is that objective discrimination causes frustration which results in collective violent action. Gurr clarified this idea with the term ‘relative deprivation’, explaining that when members of a group compare their situation – to their own past, to other groups or ideals – and find their situation lacking in any desirable social category, this leads to frustration which, in turn, may activate organized political violence. Thus, explained Gurr (1970: 24), ‘the potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivity’. According to this theory, the (objective) condition of a disadvantaged group and the (subjective) feelings of its affiliated members converge, forming grievances at the individual level, which in turn incite violent collective action.

However, the premise of relative deprivation produced a major research agenda which failed to prove the theory. While many studies (e.g. Davies, 1962; Ellingsen, 2000; Harff & Gurr, 2004; Saxton, 2005) supported the contention that discrimination and grievances are sources of political violence, others did not. In fact, the extensive empirical work based on this theory found diverse and even contradictory findings regarding the relationship between economic/political deprivation and conflict. Lichbach (1989) and Muller (1980) reviewed this literature and found that there are no consistent findings on the link between economic deprivation and conflict. Brush (1996) reviewed 649 studies which address Gurr (1970) and found that those that support relative deprivation tend to be non-empirical studies and most empirical studies do not support the theory.¹

In his later studies, Gurr (1993, 2000; Gurr & Moore, 1997) shifted the focus from grievances at the individual level to grievances at the group level as causes of group mobilization, which results in conflict. The frustration–aggression idea remained intact. Relying on others’ theoretical assertions, notably Tilly’s (1978) political mobilization argument, Gurr and others pointed at a sense of injustice to stress that discrimination or objective inequality between groups causes group-level grievances that drive conflictual behavior. Harff & Gurr (2004) concluded that groups with a shared (ethnic) identity that are discriminated against tend to be hostile and violent. A related research program using Gurr’s data along with data collected independently by Fox (2002, 2004) and Akbaba & Tydas (2011) found a link between religious grievances and conflict, usually in combination with grievances over autonomy issues. Other studies using different data found mixed results on this link (Basedau, Pfeiffer & Vüllers; Basedau et al., 2017).

Gurr’s (1993, 2000; Gurr & Moore, 1997) research program found a stronger connection between some forms of collective grievances and conflict than with others. Overall economic discrimination and grievances had a weak link, at best, to conflict. Political and cultural grievances had a stronger connection. Grievances over autonomy issues were also strongly connected to conflict. Other studies using different data essentially found the same results (Cederman, Wimmer & Min, 2010; Cederman, Weidmann & Gleditsch, 2011; Wimmer, Cederman & Min, 2009; Wucherpfennig et al., 2012). The Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) project has paid close attention to the discrimination of ethnic groups and its impact on the risk of civil war. In an analysis of inequality and grievances of ethnic groups, Cederman, Gleditsch & Buhaug (2013) found that political and economic exclusion at the group level had strong effects on the risk of civil war. Likewise, Bormann, Cederman & Vogt (2017) examined perception of grievances by members of diverse linguistic groups and found that linguistic divisions highly increase the risk of intrastate conflict, more than religious ones. The horizontal inequality argument used in these studies mirrors Gurr’s (1993, 2000; Gurr & Moore, 1997) arguments as it posits that ‘inequalities coinciding with cultural cleavages may enhance group grievances, which in turn may facilitate mobilization for conflict’ (Østby, 2013: 207). The estimates used in both of these research programs precisely measure discrimination against a group that is culturally distinct from the majority.

Collier & Hoeffler (2004: 564) posit that ‘rebellion occurs when grievances are sufficiently acute that people want to engage in violent protest’. Like Gurr (1993, 2000), who defines discrimination by various factors, including economic, political, cultural, and autonomy issues, they distinguish between four types of group grievances: ethnic/religious hatred, political repression, political exclusion, and economic inequality (Collier & Hoeffler, 2004). To measure these grievances, they offer objective proxies, including for example polarization as an indicator of ethnic/religious hatred, autocracy as a proxy measure of political oppression, and Gini coefficient as an indicator of economic inequality. The results of their study, however, show that such objective measures of grievances contributed very little to explaining the mobilization for collective violence in a civil war.

Other scholars also address the gap between objective and subjective aspects of grievance and their influence on political violence (Regan & Norton, 2005). Fox, Bader & McClure (2017) stress that while many studies focus on the connection between perceived grievances and political violence, they overlook the link between objective discrimination and subjective grievances. Their study, focusing on causes of negative attitudes toward a government and political activity against a government, supports the assertion that grievances, once formed, are linked to conflict behavior. However, it finds no evidence that objective discrimination predicts either grievances or conflictual behavior. In other words, they emphasize the need to distinguish between opposition to actual and perceived injustice when violent political action is concerned.

On a more general level, despite the differences between the relative deprivation, grievances, and horizontal inequality arguments, especially in the mechanism through which mobilization and conflict occur, they all posit that discrimination directed at a specific minority should increase that minority’s mobilization. More specifically, these studies focus on the link between grievances and collective violent action as expressed domestically as rebellion, civil war, and other forms of internal conflict and violence (Mishali-Ram, 2014, 2015). As we discuss in more detail below, the foreign fighters’ literature essentially argues that these same independent variables can predict the volunteering of individuals to become fighters in foreign wars. Given this, our study tests whether religious discrimination, which has been shown to stimulate rebellion and conflict, may motivate foreign fighters. Since these foreign fighters are mostly Muslims, variables which focus on government-based and societal discrimination directed specifically at Muslim minorities are particularly pertinent potential causes.

Discrimination, grievances, and foreign fighters

Muller, Dietz & Finkel (1991) find that deprivation and discontent are connected to political action only when weighted by expectancy of the action’s success and the perceived importance of personal participation. This makes the question of what motivates individuals to engage in political violence outside their country more acute than the question of their participation in rebellion within their state. Indeed, as Hegghammer (2010: 63–64) points out, the vast majority of volunteering fighters are utterly detached from the events in the countries to which they journey and have little political and material benefit to gain from these wars. Thus, the increasing flow of foreign fighters in recent years raises the question of what motivates people to voluntarily join conflicts in far-flung battlefields and take part in foreign wars that ostensibly do not concern their personal interests and have no direct influence on their own well-being. Despite the uneven ability of discrimination and grievances to predict conflict, there is a growing literature which argues that they are influential factors in recruiting to foreign wars.

The phenomenon of Muslim foreign fighters, on which we focus, requires the examination of arguments of the grievance, horizontal inequality, and relative-deprivation theories because it integrates group-level grievances (of Sunni Muslims) and political action taken on an individual basis. Indeed, the literature on group discrimination and grievances focuses primarily on explanations for collective action in civil war. Common to civil war and foreign war is individuals’ decision to join violent action within a group whose goals and values they share. In both cases, group discrimination is the source of the grievances that motivate for recruitment. In civil wars, individuals join their local affiliation groups in fighting an internal struggle; in foreign wars individuals, coming from various and distant countries, make their way to join a new, wider affiliation group – in this case a trans-Islamic community – in a war that is going on outside the borders of their home countries. A brief glance at the foreign fighters involved in the current wars in Syria and Iraq shows that these groups comprise individuals from a variety of countries, with diverse personal and structural backgrounds. As empirical studies on the driving forces behind these fighters show, many of them are affected by group discrimination, real or perceived, and are strongly motivated by grievances related to their Islamic affiliation (Dur-e-Aden, 2016; Hegghammer, 2013b; Perešin, 2015).

Malet (2013, 2015) reviewed the various definitions of foreign fighters used by academics, policymakers, and journalists, which generally emphasize the transnational dimension of the activities of non-state armed groups. Adopting Malet’s (2013: 9) definition, we relate to foreign fighters as ‘non-citizens of conflict states who join insurgencies during civil conflict’. To understand what motivates these non-citizens to join a war in a foreign country, scholars look at both country-level factors in the foreign fighters’ home countries (e.g. Benmelech & Klor, 2016; Hewitt & Kelley-Moore, 2009; Mishali-Ram, 2018; Pokalova, 2018), and individual-level backgrounds and incentives (e.g. Barrett, 2014; Borum & Fein, 2017; Coolsaet, 2015; Dur-e-Aden, 2016; Frenett & Silverman, 2016; Hegghammer, 2013a,b; Malet, 2010).

The literature on the individual-level motivations relies considerably on the study of radicalization. In a broad review of the literature on radicalization into violent extremism, Vergani et al. (2018) find greater focus on pull factors than push factors, and a lack of research on personal ones. The behavioral manifestations of radicalization they checked included an individual committing an act of violent extremism or joining a violent extremist group. The push factors that appear most often in scholarly literature are relative deprivation (also variously called inequality, marginalization, grievance, and other forms of discrimination), poverty, and unemployment (Vergani et al., 2018; Pisoiu, 2015; Scorgie-Porter, 2015; Botha, 2014). The most common pull factor is the consumption of extremist propaganda. Other notable pull factors include group dynamics (like peer pressure, kinship ties, and identification with a group), as well as charismatic leaders and recruiters (Bartlet & Miller, 2012; Hegghammer, 2006). In the context of jihadist extremism, knowledge of Islam and religiosity are often negatively associated with radicalization ‘with extremists generally being less religious and having lower knowledge of religious texts before their radicalization into violent extremism’ (Vergani et al., 2018: 10; Acevedo & Chaudhary, 2015). Interestingly, push factors are comparatively more cited as a driver of group radicalization than individual radicalization.

The expanding literature on foreign fighters comprises quantitative studies which examine a large sample of countries/fighters, and a larger body of research that includes qualitative case studies on a limited sample of countries/fighters. Perliger & Milton (2016), for example, analyze a dataset of 1,175 individuals who traveled or attempted to travel from European countries to join the wars in Syria or Iraq. Bakker & De Bont (2016) examine a dataset of 211 foreign fighters originating in Belgium and 159 from the Netherlands. Hewitt & Kelley-Moore (2009) focus on the characteristics of 30 Muslim countries from which about 1,000 foreign fighters travelled to join the war in Iraq. Similarly, Benmelech & Klor (2016) examine political, economic, and social indicators of 65 home countries of fighters who joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and Pokalova (2018) analyzes a dataset of 103 countries from which 33,813 fighters joined the wars in Syria and Iraq.

Among the qualitative studies, Mishali-Ram (2018) compares the political, economic, and social conditions in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, two major countries of foreign fighters’ origin, to Egypt, from where relatively limited numbers of volunteers joined the Syrian war. However, most case studies focus on the fighters’ perspective. Dur-e-Aden (2016) analyzes the profiles of nine Western foreign fighters. Others examine information coming from the immediate vicinity of those who joined foreign wars, by talking to their family members and friends. Weggemans, Bakker & Grol (2014), for example, interviewed 18 persons who were in the direct environment of five foreign fighters before they traveled to Syria. Bakker & Grol (2015) interviewed 20 persons who were close to six individuals who later joined the Syrian war. These studies, with their varied methodologies and sources of information, present diverse conclusions about the relationship between grievances and the motivation to become foreign fighters.

Several studies look at economic conditions as drivers of foreign fighting. Country-level studies largely agree that poor economic conditions and high economic inequality are not among the factors that encourage foreign fighters’ recruitment (Benmelech & Klor, 2016; Mishali-Ram, 2018). In fact, empirical findings indicate that nations with higher Human Development Index (HDI) levels have a higher foreign fighter outflow (Benmelech & Klor, 2016; Pokalova, 2018; Hewitt & Kelley-Moore, 2009). Studies also show that while levels of corruption do not correlate with foreign fighting (Hewitt & Kelley-Moore, 2009), levels of unemployment do (Verwimp, 2016).

HDI is particularly interesting as it provides a broad measure of the well-being of the residents of a country, including not only economic factors (level of income) but also health and education components. Scholars have offered practical explanations for the link between HDI and the recruitment to foreign wars. Pokalova (2018: 4), for example, notes that ‘to be able to depart for a foreign country, an individual has to possess a certain level of education and income to know how to make a trip and to be able to afford it’. Similarly, Krueger & Malečková (2003: 142–143) explain that more educated people are more likely to participate in politics, ‘probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues and effort, all of which are more likely if people have enough education and income to concern themselves with more than minimum economic subsistence’. On the demand side, they add, recruiting terrorist organizations may prefer educated, committed individuals.

We add a possible substantial explanation to this link, drawing on the relative deprivation, grievances, and horizontal inequality premises. As previous studies show, perceptions of inequality are likely to develop among cultural minorities. This is especially expected among members of immigrant communities who compare their status to that of majority groups in prosperous countries. Difficulties in assimilating in well-off countries may enhance frustration and alienation among members of minority groups, which induce some of them to radicalization. That is, inequality is not about absolute levels of discrimination but, rather, about perceived inequality when measured against some point of comparison. In this case, we propose that the wealth of a country may provide a sharper contrast for an immigrant minority which feels it does not fully share in that prosperity. Fighting alongside their Muslim fellows, for causes of the wider Muslim society, may be an outlet to such frustrations.

Studies focusing on the individuals’ perspective reveal disagreement about the extent to which socio-economic grievances affect motivation to join foreign wars. On one hand, Perliger & Milton (2016: 15) find that many of the European fighters came from a lower socio-economic status. Bakker & De Bont (2016) find that most of the Belgian and Dutch fighters were born to families of the lower or middle class, and about half of them had no formal education. Others find that most foreign fighters they examined came from relatively bad neighborhoods, were exposed to crime and drug abuse, and had modest levels of education and limited chances on the labor market (Weggemans, Bakker & Grol, 2014; Bakker & Grol, 2015). On the other hand, most of the Western foreign fighters in Dur-e-Aden’s (2016) sample were educated and of a middle-class background. Dawson & Amarasingam (2017) similarly conclude that socio-economic marginalization was not among the factors that influenced the Canadian foreign fighters.

Studies focusing on state-level political and social factors consistently find that deprivation and grievances have little impact on the outflow of foreign fighters. Hewitt & Kelley-Moore (2009) and Pokalova (2018) find that repressive environment and low civil liberties or political freedom are not significant factors of foreign fighting. However, studies at the individual level show that political grievances and social alienation often influence the decision to become a foreign fighter (Barret, 2014; Coolsaet, 2015; Dur-e-Aden, 2016). Barret (2014: 18) portrays the volunteering fighters in Syria and Iraq as ‘disaffected, aimless and lacking a sense of identity and belonging’. Likewise, Coolsaet (2015) concludes that foreign fighters often feel isolated and see themselves as outcasts of society in their countries. Social network analysis adds that people often join terrorist organizations simply because their friends do (McAdam & Paulsen, 1993: 644). These observations point to perceived rather than objective deprivation as the main driving force behind the decision to join foreign wars. In other words, those who become foreign fighters are largely characterized by a sense of social alienation and frustration, regardless of the actual state of political and civil rights in their home countries.

The mixed findings on the link between discrimination and mobilization for foreign wars underscore the need to present a systematic analysis of various variables of governmental and societal discrimination directed at Muslim minorities. More importantly, we posit that minority-specific variables, such as those used in this study, provide a better cross-country test for the impact of discrimination on foreign fighters originating from a country. The existing studies either focus on survey or interview data to determine which individuals are more likely to become foreign fighters or use country-level variables to predict how many foreign fighters will originate from a country. No previous study tests the influence of discrimination experienced specifically by Muslims.

Another prominent issue addressed in the literature on foreign fighters’ motivations is social alienation that is linked to religious identity, or ‘ethnic/religious hatred’ as Collier & Hoeffler (2004: 570) put it. In this vein, a wide range of studies examines the phenomenon of Muslim foreign fighters who come from majority Muslim and majority non-Muslim countries, focusing on Islamism and radicalization as motivating factors for recruitment.

The discussion of Islamism in the context of foreign fighters converges with a broader literature dealing with radical Islam and political violence. In a review of the definitions and sources of Islamism, Mozaffari (2007: 21) characterized it as a religious ideology, which combines an Islamic faith and a political doctrine. This combination embodies the reliance on religious sentiments to mobilize political action. Lewis (1990), who searched for the roots of ‘Muslim rage’, concluded that Islamists generally share the ideology that Muslim states should be reformed and come under Sharia law. They also strive to restore Islamic might in the world, see Western influence as a threat to Islamic life, and direct hostile feelings against Western dominance. Both ‘infidel’ Muslim regimes and Western governments are perceived as enemies of Islam. The recruitment of Muslim volunteers to fight them is thus part of a holy war, jihad, and is based on the ability of the recruiting groups to create a narrative that is focused on the deprivation and oppression of Muslims, in Muslim and Western countries (Dodwell, Milton & Rassler, 2016).

Country-level explanations suggest that the presence of major Islamic movements enhances religious consciousness and promotes sectarian discourse in Muslim societies, which in turn facilitates the recruitment of volunteers to transnational jihad (Mishali-Ram, 2018; Pokalova, 2018). Benmelech & Klor (2016: 3) find that most of the foreign fighters who joined the wars in Syria and Iraq were driven by religious and political ideology. Regarding non-Muslim countries of origin, they find that the motivation to volunteer grew in the face of the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries. Nevertheless, here again, a much larger body of research focuses on the individual’s perspective, arguing that the foreign fighters’ phenomenon is highly associated with sectarian-based grievance and rage. This source of foreign fighting can be generally divided into two interrelated explanations, one is grievances, the other is sectarian solidarity.

Grievance-based explanations, as discussed above, include objective and subjective aspects of discrimination, and it is often difficult to differentiate between them. Coolsaet (2015) describes the inferiority of the ethnic and cultural status of Muslim migrants and their children in Belgium and other Western countries. He points to the gap between the Belgian constitution, which formally grants equal rights to all, and the actual discriminatory attitudes toward the Muslim community. The result, he says, is mounting grievances of young Muslims, who ‘feel as if they have no future as their horizon’ (Coolsaet, 2015: 35). These feelings of alienation converge with anger at the situation of their common group in other countries, and the perception that it is under an existential threat (Malet, 2010; Frenett & Silverman, 2016). Hegghammer (2013a: 4) connects these feelings to the intra-Sunni solidarity norm that exists in many Sunni communities, which creates a general inclination to support ‘fellow Muslims in need’. That is, the combination of perceived/actual grievances of Muslims in their countries, and the obligation to defend their Muslim brethren who are in perceived/actual danger in other countries, generates a significant driving force in becoming a foreign fighter.

It should be noted though, that the sectarian-based explanation of foreign fighters’ motivations does not necessarily rely on religiosity or religious devotion. In fact, empirical findings indicate that most of the fighters have no Islamic background and education (El-Said & Barrett, 2017). Rather, the volunteering of young Muslims is based on sectarian rage and solidarity, promoted by the recruiting organizations, as can be seen in the ‘message to France on behalf on Mujahidin from Sham’ that was released in a video in January 2013:²

Following the decision of the French government that prevents our righteous women from wearing the veil as required by Allah’s order, who constantly fights Islam and Muslims, who is present with the Crusaders in Afghanistan, France is today the flagship of disbelief and of Allah’s enemies […] We call and incite Muslims worldwide and Muslims who live in France […] to accomplish their religious duty and strike French interests, institutions, soldiers as well as civilians on French soil and worldwide.

As we have seen, grievance-based explanations are at the core of the study of foreign fighters. Because in recent years the phenomenon has been linked mainly to Muslim foreign fighters who join transnational jihadi wars to protect Muslims and Islamic life, special attention is paid to religious-based deprivation in their countries of origin as a source of grievance formation. Our study contributes to the debate about the influence of religious grievances on foreign fighters’ motivations by exploring discrimination specifically targeted at Muslim minorities.

To the extent that one accepts the theory that deprivation creates the grievances that motivate violent political action, it is logical to expect that any form of discrimination against Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries might be a driving factor behind joining foreign wars. When discrimination is examined, one must first observe government policy and practices toward minority religions. However, as Coolsaet (2015) points out, discrimination can also be expressed in actions taken by non-government actors. That includes societal discrimination, harassment, acts of prejudice, and violence against minority religions. Previous studies using RASM3 discrimination variables (e.g. Fox, 2020) have shown that there are differences in the levels of governmental and societal discrimination recorded in developed and developing countries, and that there is not necessarily a correlation between the two forms of discrimination in a country. Therefore, it is necessary to examine whether the existence of any kind of discrimination taking place in a country affects the recruitment to foreign wars. Accordingly, we formulate and test two main hypotheses:

H1: Higher level of governmental discrimination against Muslims in the country of origin will result in higher level of foreign fighters’ outflow.

H2: Higher level of societal discrimination targeted against Muslims in the country of origin will result in higher level of foreign fighters’ outflow.

Research design

This study uses data from several sources. The dependent variables all measure the number of foreign fighters originating from a country. As estimates vary, we use data from three sources, each providing a separate dependent variable: International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR),³ the Soufan Group,⁴ and Pokalova (2018), covering the 2011 to 2015 period. The ICSR dataset provides estimates for the numbers of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq from 50 countries where data and/or reliable government estimates were available, the Soufan dataset covers 66 countries of foreign fighters’ origin, and Pokalova’s dataset includes 103 countries. In some cases, these sources provide a range of numbers (e.g. 50 to 100) for a particular country. When this occurred, we took the midpoint in the range.⁵

In order to determine the number of foreign fighters relative to potential foreign fighters we determined the number of Muslims in a country by multiplying the country’s population in 2014⁶ by the proportion of the country’s population which is Muslim.⁷ We divided the number of foreign fighters by this number in order to obtain the proportion of foreign fighters among Muslims. As this number was small in most cases, we multiply it by 1,000 in order to get our dependent variable. This was done separately for each estimate of foreign fighters. Some previous studies used the raw number of foreign fighters as their dependent variable. We argue that this proportional variable is more accurate because we would expect more fighters to come from a country with a large Muslim population as compared to a small one. While previous studies accounted for this through the use of independent variables measuring country population and Muslim percentage of population, we posit the proportion of Muslims from a country who become foreign fighters is a more elegant and accurate measure. This likely explains why some of our results diverge from previous studies.

Our variables for discrimination against Muslims are taken from the Religion and State-Minorities Round 3 (RASM3) dataset. This dataset includes information on 771 religious minorities in 183 countries and includes all religious minorities which meet a population cutoff of 0.2% of a country’s population as well as a sampling of smaller minorities.⁸ All discrimination variables were collected separately for each minority, so unlike other datasets measuring similar phenomena (e.g. Grim & Finke, 2011), which measure these factors at the state-level, RASM3 has information that is specific to the minority at hand. RASM3 includes 125 cases with Muslim minorities in countries that do not have a Muslim majority.

While RASM3 does code Muslim minorities in countries with a Muslim majority, for example, Sunni Muslims would be coded as a minority in a Shia Muslim-majority state, countries with Muslim majorities were excluded from this study. We believe that the dynamics motivating Muslim foreign fighters who are among the majority in their country of origin differ from those for Muslims who are minorities in their home countries. However, the dependent variables in all three datasets from which we draw provide only numbers of foreign fighters originating from these countries, not to which sect of Islam they belong. Thus, in these Muslim-majority countries of origin we cannot differentiate between fighters who belong to that country’s majority and the minority. For example, we cannot determine if foreign fighters coming from Malaysia come from the country’s Sunni majority or Shia minority. For this reason, we cannot assume the discrimination variables which are specific to the minority (in the case of Malaysia targeted against the Shia minority) motivate the foreign fighters coming from the country, many of whom are likely to be from the majority group.

RASM3 includes variables on both government-based and societal-based religious discrimination. Government-related religious discrimination (GRD) is defined as governmental restrictions on the religious practices, institutions or clergy of minority religions that are not placed on the majority religion. Thus, for the cases included in this study, it looks at limitations on Islam that are not placed on the country’s majority religion. RASM covers 35 specific types of GRD, including for example state surveillance of religious activities; restrictions on formal religious organizations, religious schools/education, and religious symbols or clothing; failure to protect religious minorities against violence or punish perpetrators. Each variable is measured on a scale of 0 to 2, resulting in a potential range of 0–70.

Societal-related religious discrimination (SRD) is defined as violent discriminatory actions taken against members of religious minorities, because they are religious minorities, by members of society who do not directly represent the government. The dataset covers 27 specific types of SRD, including for example discrimination in the workplace; boycott of business/denial of access to businesses, stores, etc.; vandalism of minority property; violence targeted against clergy, against proselytizers or converts, or against a minority due to their religious affiliation. Each variable is measured on a scale of 0 to 2, resulting in a potential range of 0–54.⁹

It is important to emphasize that the RASM GRD variable focuses only on religious discrimination. This excludes all other forms of government-based discrimination. However, we argue that this variable is still useful for several reasons. First, no other data collection of which we are aware has a government-based discrimination variable specific to Muslim minorities. Second, different types of discrimination while rarely identical are often correlated (Gurr, 1993), so the GRD variable is likely representative of levels of discrimination against Muslim minorities in these countries. Third, the RASM SRD variable includes a comprehensive evaluation of all forms of societal discrimination so general levels of discrimination from that front are covered in this study. The components of both of these variables as well as how common these components are among the minorities included in this study are listed in Online appendix A.

Two additional variables from RASM3 are used as controls. First, we include actions taken by Muslims against members of the majority religion. This variable consists of five categories of actions, each coded on a scale of 0 to 2 based on severity: violence, terror, harassment, property crimes, and other actions. We include this variable because it measures dissatisfaction with members of the majority religion. Second, we include religious support which is a composite index of 51 ways a government might support religion, each coded as 0 or 1. We include this because a state which supports a religion other than Islam might engender higher levels of alienation among Muslims.

The model includes three additional controls. The first is the Polity index which measures a country’s level of democracy on a scale of –10 (most autocratic) to 10 (most democratic).¹⁰ Another control is the proportion of the country’s population which is Muslim, using the RCS dataset (Brown & James, 2018). Finally, we control for the HDI for the country.¹¹ Past studies have shown a correlation between this index and foreign fighters (e.g. Benmelech & Klor, 2016). We use the 2014 versions of all three of these variables.

We engaged in several robustness checks, all of which had no meaningful influence on the results. We replaced the societal discrimination variable with other variable subsets of the scale looking at economic discrimination, property crimes, nonviolent harassment, speech acts, and violence. We tested two additional World Bank economic indicators. We replaced the HDI with per capita GDP (logged). We tested unemployment, both in addition to and instead of the HDI. We replaced the societal actions by Muslims variable with two component variables, each in separate tests, measuring terror acts by Muslims and non-terror violence by Muslims. We also tested the country of origin’s past military interventions in Muslim-majority states, using both the number of interventions and a simple dichotomous variable measuring whether any intervention took place – both proved insignificant.¹² Finally, we tested the distance between the country of origin and both Syria and Iraq.¹³ All of these tests are provided in the Online appendix.

Data analysis

Manifestations of both governmental discrimination (GRD) and societal discrimination (SRD) against Muslims were found in most of the non-Muslim-majority countries under study. At least one type of the 35 examined types of GRD is present in 76.8% of the countries, and at least one of the 27 types of SRD is present in 56% of the countries. Among the notable types of GRD are restrictions on building/leasing/repairing/maintaining places of worship (present in 31.2% of the countries under study), state surveillance of religious activities (16.8%), and restrictions on religious symbols or clothing (15.2%). Among the most common types of SRD are discrimination in the workplace (in 25.6% of the examined countries),

Table I.

Prediction of foreign fighters, Model 1

	ICSR		Pokalova		Soufan
	Beta	Sig	Beta	Sig	Beta	Sig
Government discrimination	–0.207	0.077	–0.137	0.241	–0.132	0.262
Societal discrimination	0.149	0.191	–0.072	0.527	0.076	0.511
Societal actions by Muslim	–0.111	0.270	–0.152	0.132	–0.074	0.465
HDI	0.268*	0.018	0.231*	0.041	0.305**	0.0068
Government support for religion	0.179	0.113	0.285*	0.012	0.118	0.301
Polity	–0.040	0.716	0.005	0.962	–0.030	0.787
Muslim % of population	–0.003	0.978	–0.001	0.991	0.017	0.860
Df	124		124		124
adj r-squared	0.083		0.080		0.063

nonviolent harassment of members of religious minorities (20%), and antiminority propaganda/statements/articles in the media (19.2%). A full listing of all components of both variables and how common they are is available in the Online appendix.

We analyze the data on discrimination and foreign fighting for each of the three dependent variables, presented in Table I and all robustness tests in the Online appendix. Overall, the results show little evidence that discrimination, both by the government and by society, increases levels of foreign fighters originating from a country. In none of the models are any of the religious discrimination variables significant at the 0.05 level which is the standard cutoff for statistical significance. Even if we relax this standard and use a 0.1 cutoff for significance, the evidence is at best mixed. For the ICSR dependent variable, GRD is associated with fewer foreign fighters leaving from a country at levels of significance of .077 using the ICSR dependent variable. This is the opposite of the result predicted by Hypothesis 1 so if considered significant, it still falsified the hypothesis.

There is no shortage of examples for the lack of a significant relationship between the level of discrimination against Muslim minorities and the recruitment to foreign wars. In Myanmar, for example, there are high levels of both government-based and societal-based discrimination (a GRD score of 36 on a scale of 0–70; and a SRD score of 30 on a scale of 0–54) in the period under study, yet the three datasets we examine record no foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria originating from Myanmar. Greece, Germany, and Sweden too have relatively high scores of discrimination against Muslim minorities (GRD scores of 13 in Greece and Germany, 11 in Sweden; SRD scores of 18, 17, and 10, respectively), but the rates of fighters in Syria and Iraq originating in these countries are significantly different. The number of foreign fighters from Germany is estimated at the range between 550 and 800 (based on the three datasets we have), the number of fighters from Sweden ranges between 165 and 300. In contrast, there is no record of any fighters originating in Greece during the period under consideration. Mexico demonstrates the opposite, with zero discrimination scores and estimated 150 foreign fighters originating in this country.

Two of the control variables show a significant influence on foreign fighters’ origination from a country. In several models the HDI has a positive influence. In robustness checks using per capita GDP (logged) the results are essentially the same.¹⁴ This is similar to results from previous studies (Hewitt & Kelley-Moore, 2009; Pokalova, 2018). Finally, the religious support variable is significant in the model using the Pokalova dependent variable. While this may provide some indirect evidence that alienation may be related to foreign fighters originating from a country, this assumes that government support for a religion other than Islam causes alienation among at least some Muslims.

Conclusions

Relative deprivation and grievance theory has had a mixed record at predicting conflict in general (Lichbach, 1989; Brush, 1996). The emerging literature has nevertheless applied grievance-based arguments to explain Muslim foreign fighters’ motivations to join recent conflicts (Bakker & Grol, 2015; Coolsaet, 2015; Dur-e-Aden, 2016). Unlike previous studies which use country-level discrimination and grievance measures (Benmelech & Klor, 2016; Pokalova, 2018) or focus on which individuals within a country are more likely to become foreign fighters (Dur-e-Aden, 2016; Hegghammer, 2013b; Perešin, 2015), this study tests the proposition that discrimination directed specifically against Muslim minorities in non-Muslim-majority countries can explain the macro-level flow of foreign fighters to join groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Despite a considerable body of theory proposing this argument, and some empirical results from previous studies connecting country-level economic indicators such as unemployment to the number of foreign fighters originating from a country (Benmelech & Klor, 2016), we find no evidence supporting this proposition.

In contrast, we find evidence that wealthier countries are more likely to produce foreign fighters. Previous studies attribute this phenomenon to the increased likelihood of educated people engaging in politics and the necessity of resources to travel (Krueger & Malečková, 2003: 142–143; Pokalova, 2018: 4). We argue that high income might increase relative deprivation precisely because this deprivation is based on perceived contrasts. That is, Muslim immigrant minorities may be more likely to perceive a gap between their status and those of the majority in wealthier countries because of the perceived wealth of the majority. This suggests that cross-country minority-specific information on economic factors such as unemployment and income, as well as their relation to how religious minorities perceive their status as compared to the general population, would be fruitful avenues of future research.

Be that as it may, our findings indicate that if grievances are, in fact, a motivation for individuals to become foreign fighters, these grievances are not linked to objective discrimination and are more likely due to perceived gaps. While we find evidence that this may be due to perceived gaps between the wealth of the majority and Muslim minorities combined with cultural cleavages, likely there are also other factors in play. For example, such grievances are not only conceptual but are also personal. That is, at least some of the grievances that drive foreign fighters stem from individual-level sources and relate to personal circumstances that cannot be explained by objective measures of discrimination against a minority group.

This suggests two potential types of data collection focusing specifically on Muslims which would facilitate additional research. First, individual-level measures for fighters including subjective grievances and other personal characteristics of volunteers, such as previous levels of religious extremism. Second, extensive cross-country surveys among Muslim minorities examining measures of subjective deprivation and perceptions of their political, economic, and social condition compared to the majority. This would help shed further light on a growing body of research demonstrating that objective conditions are a poor predictor of grievances, and that other factors like mobilization efforts by leaders and organizations and exposure to Salafist ideology in mosques and on the internet, provide a better explanation for collective political violence (van Stekelenberg & Klandermans, 2013; Foster & Matheson, 1999; Gill & Matheson, 2006; Fox, Bader & McClure, 2017).

That being said, this study clearly shows that objective discrimination in the form of GRD and SRD does not influence levels of foreign fighters. Accordingly, future research should look to political mobilization and other processes of grievance formation to explain this phenomenon. It should also consider the possibility that grievances cannot explain this phenomenon.

Footnotes

Replication data

The dataset and codebook for the empirical analysis in this article can be found at www.religionandstate.org; SPSS data analysis files can be found at .

Funding

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 23/14), the German-Israel Foundation (Grant 1291-119.4/2015), and the John Templeton Foundation. Any opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the supporters of this research.

ORCID iDs

Meirav Mishali-Ram

Jonathan Fox

Notes

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