Islam på svenska : tidskriften Salaam och islams globalisering

This dissertation focuses on written Islamic discourses in Swedish, especially the journal Salaam - Islamisk tidskrift. The journal first appeared in 1986 and is a part of the activities of Islamiska Informationsföreningen. From the beginning, Salaam has been edited by female converts to Islam in their twenties or early thirties. Female converts also account for a large number of the texts that have been published in Salaam, but other women and men have contributed. Only a small number of the articles in the journal, apart from some translations, are by Muslims with a formal Islamic education. The content of Salaam is described at length and commented upon. The dissertation also contains a descriptive overview of all other literature in Swedish produced by Muslims in Sweden during last century. Throughout the second half of the 20th century there has been a small, but ongoing production of texts on Islam written by Muslims themselves in the local languages of all Western European countries. This literature has received little attention from researchers involved in the research field of “Islam in Europe”. On of the main objects of the present study is to put these texts in focus. The central analytic question in the dissertation is why Salaam contains the interpretations of Islam that it does. This leads to a discussion on the genealogy of these interpretations. By combining the sociology of knowledge in the tradition of Peter Berger, the notions of power, discourse and genealogy of Michel Foucault, and theories of globalization and religion, the dissertation attempts to uncover a complex genealogy. Three globally spread discourses are identified as important in the genealogy of Salaam’s discourse: the da‘wa of the Islamic movement; the Western European and North American modernity; and globalization, especially a group of specific, global flows that are connected to certain key values in the above-mentioned modernity. The dissertation includes analytic discussions and descriptions of these three discourses and how they relate to Salaam. Finally, a theoretical discussion on religious interpretation leads to the question whether or not the discourse of Salaam can be called an example of Swedish Islam.