Religious Attendance and Political Participation in Kurdistan Region

Abstract

Abstract Studies in the western countries have shown that political participation has a very strong correlation with religious tendency. Those who are members of religious institutions or those who go to pray in their holly sites tend to be more active politically and become members of civil society compare to those who do not have religious tendency. While in the eastern countries, there have been studies that prove the more religious people are, the less politically active they are. This study, tries to explore the relation between religious tendency and political participation in Kurdistan region of Iraq. The quantitative data have been collected in the cities of Erbil, Sulemani and Duhok with the sample of 354 cases who have been chosen in multi-stage randomly. Gender, Age, Education level, and social status were among the measurement that was used along with 19 more questions on political participation and religious tendency in the questioner. The study found that participants’ religiosity is negatively correlated with their political participation, the type and direction of the relation between two variables, does not change depending on the forms of the political participation.