“I can live my religion just as well at home” dimensions of religiosity of female Muslims: a qualitative analysis

Katrin Fliegenschnee, Vienna Institute of Demography
Caroline Berghammer, Vienna Institute of Demography

This article is targeted at investigating two questions. First, it studies which categories of Muslim religiosity exist and compares them to existing scales for measuring their religiosity. Second, it illustrates the content of these categories and identifies important influences on religiosity. The analysis is based on 30 biographic interviews, which were conducted in 2006 in Austria with first-generation female migrants from Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Using Grounded Theory we developed the categories representing Muslim religiosity. The latter appears to be multi-dimensional. It consists of ‘belief’ and ‘religiously argued behaviour’, which divides into ‘rituals and duties’ and ‘ethic behavioural principles’. This structure largely corresponds to several quantitative scales. Furthermore, we could deduce four factors that influence religiosity. These are ‘functions of religiosity’, ‘life course events’, ‘social network’ and ‘culture versus religion’.