Host society’s dislike of the Islamic veil: The role of subtle prejudice, values, and religion Vassilis Saroglou *, Bahija Lamkaddem, Matthieu Van Pachterbeke, Coralie Buxant Universite ´ catholique de Louvain, Department of Psychology, Belgium 1. Introduction 1.1. Islamic veil and intercultural relations Despite the many positive individual and societal efforts by European majority group members to integrate immigrants into the Western European societies, immigrants still face a great deal of subtle racism, xenophobia, prejudice and discrimination (Eurobarometer 138, 2000; Eurobarometer 263, 2007; Pettigrew, 1998). This is especially the case of immigrants of Arab and Turkish origin (the majority of whom are Muslims) who are seen particularly negatively by the host society (Cuddy et al., 2009; Rohmann, Florack, & Piontkowski, 2006), possibly because of the accumulation of historical, political, economic, cultural, and religious reasons. Within this context, the wearing of the Islamic veil by Muslim women has become a contentious issue, and many European countries have implemented specific reglementations and even specific laws to address this (McGoldrick, 2006; Welch, 2007). France, for instance, adopted a law prohibiting the wearing of ‘‘ostensible religious signs’’ in public schools. Other Western European countries also prohibit the veil, for instance in governmental and administrative offices or allow its banning in certain areas such as schools (e.g., Belgium). Understanding the host Western majority’s attitudes towards the Muslim veil is an important issue for intercultural relations. There has been a number of sociological studies on Muslim women’s perspective of the veil and the interpretations International Journal of Intercultural Relations 33 (2009) 419–428 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Accepted 27 February 2009 Keywords: Subtle racism Prejudice Values Acculturation Islam Majority’s attitudes ABSTRACT The wearing of the Islamic veil by Muslim women has become a source of tensions in Western European countries. In order to investigate majority members’ attitudes towards the veil, the present two studies (Ns = 166 and 147), carried out in Belgium, integrated three lines of research that have focused on (a) the role of subtle prejudice/racism on the host society’s attitudes towards immigrants, (b) the role of values on acculturation, and (c) the role of religious attitudes on prejudice. Results revealed the effects of subtle prejudice/ racism, values (self-enhancement values and security versus universalism), and religious attitudes (literal anti-religious thinking versus spirituality), in predicting greater levels of anti-veil attitudes beyond the effects of other related variables such as age and political conservatism. The studies also suggest the importance of including religious attitudes as part of the intergroup-relation factors that predict attitudes towards immigrants, at least with regard to specific components of intercultural relations. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Universite ´ catholique de Louvain, Division of Social Psychology, Center for Psychology of Religion, Place du Cardinal Mercier 10, B 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Tel.: +32 10 47 82 74; fax: +32 10 47 48 34. E-mail address: vassilis.saroglou@uclouvain.be (V. Saroglou). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Intercultural Relations journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel 0147-1767/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2009.02.005