Multiplex and messy, not essentialist and patriarchal: How Muslims connect religiosity differently to transgender people’s rights than women’s or homosexual people’s rights.

Previous quantitative studies argue that European Muslims oppose gender egalitarianism due to patriarchal religious interpretations. However, this overlooks the diversity in the gendered meanings Muslim people attach to their religion, and that these might be impacted by exclusionary narratives that ‘Islam opposes core Western values’. This study uniquely compares how religiosity and exclusions shape support for women’s equality and tolerance of homosexual people (‘core Western values’) versus tolerance of transgender people (not central in exclusionary narratives on ‘Western values’). Regression analyses on MI-ID data covering 518 Dutch Muslims show, first, that women decouple their religiosity from gender values, while men connect their religiosity differently to varying gender values. For instance, among men, Quran reading decreases support for women’s equality, is unrelated to tolerance of homosexual people, and increases tolerance of transgender people. Additionally, Muslim people who perceive greater group discrimination were found to attach more patriarchal interpretations to their religion concerning women’s rights, not connect their religiosity differently to homosexuality, but hold more egalitarian interpretations concerning transgender people. Altogether, rather than a patriarchal monolith, Islamic religiosity also engenders empathy of other marginalized groups and egalitarian values – especially when those values are not portrayed as ‘core Western values unbefitting of Islam’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]