Att framställa islam - En diskursanalys av tre universitetsläroböcker om islam

Abstract

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, issues related to religion and violence has been actualized in the media. Do Islamic texts and sources legitimate violent actions? In response to these questions, some professional scholars of Islam argued that the 11 September terrorists were not really Muslims, but hijackers of Islam. According to other scholars, such arguments reflect a common sui-generis discourse in religious studies which stresses the autonomy of religious phenomena, the priority of faith over cultural production, interior experiences and beliefs over social practice. The scholars in favor for a naturalistic approach in religious studies argues that, in order to approach religion in a naturalistic way, we have to be critical of representations of religion – and in this case representations of Islam – drawing on a suigeneris discourse. The aim of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, it investigates, through discourse analysis, how Islam is represented in textbooks used in religious studies introductory courses in Sweden. The paper shows how the textbooks draw on both sui-generis discourses and naturalistic discourses, although the sui-generis discourse is arguably the dominant one. On the other hand, the paper proposes alternative approaches to the study of Islam which seeks to avoid problems associated with the sui generis discourse.