Beyond Deficit Narratives: Religious Prejudice, Meaning, and Resilience in a National Sample of New Zealand Muslims

Religious minorities often endure hostility, yet longitudinal data tracking the consequences of such threats remain scarce. We report findings from the Muslim Diversity Study, which samples 667 Muslims embedded within the nationally representative New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (n = 31,526 non-Muslims). Our population-weighted analyses show that New Zealand Muslims exhibit a distinct and devout religious profile. Although no more likely than other New Zealanders to endorse general spirituality (61% vs 63%), New Zealand Muslims report much higher rates of belief in God (91% vs 40%) and dramatically more frequent engagement in costly religious practices such as worship and prayer.Despite experiencing markedly higher levels of targeted religious and ethnic discrimination, Muslims show few negative disparities in health and social outcomes. Instead, Muslims report significantly greater meaning in life, neighbourhood cohesion, and self-esteem. These findings suggest that the shared rituals and beliefs of this religious minority may foster prosocial capital that buffers against prejudice, providing the foundation for the study’s core longitudinal aim: to quantify the pathways by which religious culture fosters resilience.