SELECTED ATTITUDES OF MUSLIMS TOWARD LIFE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN THE CONTEXT OF THEIR FAITH

In the past several years, we could witness a massive mass and social media coverage of Muslims and their migration to Europe. This particular group is an object of stereotypical views and intensive emotional reactions. Despite that, Muslims living in Czech Republic are a relatively unknown and so far unexplored cultural group. Therefore, our study focused on selected faith-related attitudes toward Czech society investigated on a sample of Muslim immigrants living in Czech Republic for minimum of one year. We used a shortened and adjusted version of questionnaire previously used in WZB study (WZV, 2008) in three language mutations - Arabic, Czech, and English. The recruitment of participants was conducted via social networks; in total 143 responses were gathered. The data analysis is based primarily on descriptive statistics. The results show that there is a great variability in the strength of both the Muslim identity of the respondents and their religions believes. Their attitudes toward various topics related to Islam such as wearing headscarfs and other gender-related issues, teaching Islam in schools, or building Mosques also highly vary within the sample. Access to housing is perceived as the main source of discrimintation. Large-scale or longitudinal assessments of Muslim minority are needed to deepen our understanding of the attitudes of the Muslim minority in Czech Republic. We can assume that this topic will be investigated further in other Central European countries.