The main objective of this research was to examine description of Islam in two different schoolbooks about religion. The rapport starts with an introduction of the subject and discusses the background of the topic. After the presentation, aims, and the questions I present my methods and material used in this research. Following the method and material is earlier research where I mention some of the previous rapports and results of researchers within the discourse. The theory used to investigate the text is postcolonial and the orientalism theory presented by Edward Said.The intention of the research was to answer if the books representation contributed to an oriental description of Islam and Muslims and to see how the text and pictures where used and structured.

In contemporary global environmental governance stakeholding, as a means for defining legitimate participants in democratic decision-making, has become of great importance. In this essay I deploy the concept of ?the stakeholder perspective? to denote arguments that all stakeholders ? defined as carriers of particular interests ? should be able to participate in political decision-making affecting their interests. The purpose of the essay is to analyze the stakeholder perspective's potential to change environmental politics. Departing from the philosophy of Heidegger, I develop a theoretical approach that separate the concept of the political from that of politics.

I vår undersökning gör vi en läroboksgransknig av kapitlet som berör Islam i två läroböcker som idag används i religionsundervisningen på högstadiet. Vi har fokuserat oss på bilderna, vad de innehåller och relationen mellan bilden och texten. I litteraturgenomgången ger vi en kort presentation om läroböcker i allmänhet, bilder i läroböcker och även hur bildtolkning sker. Vi presenterar även tidigare forskning inom samma område. Syftet med vår undersökning är också att med hjälp av denotation och konnotation, göra en djupare analys av en del av de bilder vi stöter på i läroböckerna.

Qatar är ett ekonomiskt välmående land, med ett starkt auktoritärt politiskt system. Landet är därför ett avvikande fall ur moderniseringsteorin, som menar att ekonomiskt välmående leder till demokrati. Vi börjar med att förklara varför Qatar avviker från moderniseringsteorin, och fortsätter sedan med att pröva ett antal teorier och perspektiv, för att se om dessa bättre förklarar frånvaron av demokrati i landet. Följande teorier och ämnesområden diskuteras: politisk kultur och civilt samhälle, islams inverkan, sultanism, aktörsteoretiska perspektiv, rational choice, och slutligen oljans inverkan på Qatar. Två företeelser talar för demokratins frånvaro, islams starka närvaro i kulturen och politiken, samt landets ekonomiska beroende av oljeintäkter.

Since 2003 Saudi Arabia is under attack from domestic Al Qaida-cells which, by random shootings of westerners and bombings of compounds and official state buildings, is trying to challenge the stability of the royal regime. According to Al Qaida, the Royal family is attacked because of their friendly relations to the US and for not implementing Islam in the Saudi society as profound as they ought to. Political analyst finds it obvious that the Islamic Al Qaida-cells by terrorism is trying to erode the stability in the kingdom.An important foundation for stability for any government is legitimacy. The aim of this thesis is to examine the royal legitimacy strategy in the state bureaucracy of Saudi Arabia. The question at issue is: how has the royal family constructed the civil, military and religious bureaucracies to maintain and promote stability and legitimacy?The thesis focuses on the on three different units within these three bureaucracies and it surveys the way they are staffed and organized to strengthen and maintain legitimacy for the royal family.

Muslims and islam are unquestionably a part of European social life. In recent times, however, different events, such as the enlargement of the EU and the fact that muslims to a higher extent demand their rights, have brought a number of questions to the fore concerning muslims and islam in Europe. Moreover, we can see an increasing level of islamophobia in contemporary Europe, but also that the EU has launched several programs to increase both the diversity and the unity throughout the Union and to combat islamophobia. However, most of these programs focus on islam as religion and muslims in general, and such a narrow viewpoint runs the risk of missing important issues.In this new context it would be interesting to widen the scope and ask what place not only the muslim community and islam, but also sharia (an important element in islam), may have in future Europe ? especially when it comes to muslim identity?My main objects are to see how the concept of sharia is constructed in the debates in the European Parliament, how that discourse relates to a social practice ? the increasing islamophobic ideas in Europe ? and what effect this may have on muslim identity in a European context.The results shows that the Parliament constructs sharia as, for example, something archaic, threatening, inhuman and misogynistic.

The purpose of this study is to examine the actual political conditions that exist for the Iranian women. What is the political reality of the Iranian women and how can they exert political influence within the political system that exists in Iran today. This is done to see how the Iranian women's potential political influence affects Iran's democratic status. This will be answered through the overall research question: What opportunities do the Iranian women have to influence policy? This overall question is then split into three smaller research questions:1) What formal possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?2) What real possibilities to political influence do the Iranian women have?3) How have women in Iran tried to exert political influence outside the institutional framework?This will be done through a qualitative text analysis where texts concerning the Iranian women?s political influence are examined.

This paper examines if European integration has had an impact on national political parties by looking at the stances of the Swedish Green Party and the Left Party on the issue of the European Community and the European Union over time. With the development of the European Community and the European Union, national political parties face the challenge of an emerging political arena. European integration research has recently become more involved with what is called europeanization and political integration within the member states them self, this paper aims to provide further leverage to the thesis that national political actors undergo some degree of europeanization and are politically integrated in the EU, by examining manifestos of two historically eurosceptic Swedish political parties. The theoretical framework provided by neo-functional integration theory as well as europeanization is used to examine the empirical material in order to see if the political parties at the focal point of this study can be said to have undergone a change in political policy regarding the EC and EU, both in quantity and content. The analysis show that indeed both parties has undergone a change and what might be considered a europeanization, considering that the presence of the EU as a political issue seem to have risen in prominence and importance in the examined manifestos.

Muslims and islam are unquestionably a part of European social life. In recent times, however, different events, such as the enlargement of the EU and the fact that muslims to a higher extent demand their rights, have brought a number of questions to the fore concerning muslims and islam in Europe. Moreover, we can see an increasing level of islamophobia in contemporary Europe, but also that the EU has launched several programs to increase both the diversity and the unity throughout the Union and to combat islamophobia. However, most of these programs focus on islam as religion and muslims in general, and such a narrow viewpoint runs the risk of missing important issues.In this new context it would be interesting to widen the scope and ask what place not only the muslim community and islam, but also sharia (an important element in islam), may have in future Europe ? especially when it comes to muslim identity?My main objects are to see how the concept of sharia is constructed in the debates in the European Parliament, how that discourse relates to a social practice ? the increasing islamophobic ideas in Europe ? and what effect this may have on muslim identity in a European context.The results shows that the Parliament constructs sharia as, for example, something archaic, threatening, inhuman and misogynistic.

I have investigated the political culture of post-communist Russia. For a long time it has been assumed that, the history is of great importance in shaping the political culture. I wanted to find out if this was true, I chose to study the political culture of Russia. How great effects had the autocratically legacy of Soviet Union in the democratisation of Russia? My thesis show that the role of history isn't of such great importance, instead it's the Russian state that has had the greatest possibility of shaping the political culture of Russia but it failed.

Titeln på detta arbete är uppfångat från en lärobok i ämnet religion, Religion för grundskolan senare del, PULS skriven av Lennart Göth och Katarina Lycken. Titeln avslöjar till stor del problematiken om vad vi har för avsikt att diskutera och undersöka i denna uppsats. Vår ansats är att se hur ämnet religion skildras i religionsläroböcker på högstadiet. För att få svar på frågan kommer vi använda oss ett flertal underfrågor, bland annat så vill vi veta om religionerna likställda i den svenska skollitteraturen och om olika religioner ges lika utrymme..

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka hur islam har skildrats och hur muslimer har porträtterats i läroböcker i religionskunskap för gymnasieskolan mellan åren 1994-2010. Vidare är syftet att se hur läromedlen stämmer in med teorin om Eurabien samt de analyser som Edward Said och Samuel Huntington gör. Till detta fogar jag aspekten huruvida skildringarna av islam och muslimer har förändrats över tid, gynnat eller missgynnat islamofobi samt vilka problem som läromedlen skapar för läraren. Metoden som jag använder mig utav är sakorienterad hermeneutik och urvalet är gjort för att få en så stor spridning som möjligt mellan olika författare under de årtal som undersökningen är avgränsad till. Den teoretiska grunden består av dels Edward Saids och Samuel Huntingtons analyser men även av Mattias Gardells, Andreas Malms och Mats Bergenhorns bidrag till vetenskapen.

During the last years social media have developed and become a place where all kind of people can meet and interact with each other without any kind of physical contact to one another. We belive that this development also has made it easier for political parties and organisations to spread their propaganda to the people that uses social media without them knew from whom the information is coming. With this in mind we decided to do a study about the social media Facebook and how the users of Facebook think they are being influenced by political propaganda from organisations and private persons. In our study we decided that we wanted to know why our respondents are using Facebook, if they have payed attention to two political questions, one international question and one national question, that have been noticed recently and if they feel that they are being influenced of political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have concluded that our respondents, depending on how old they are, do feel that they are being influenced by political propaganda when they are using Facebook. We have also noticed that the younger part of our respondents feel that they are using Facebook because their friends do it and that they have noticed the international political question more than the national political question. In the older category of respondents the reason of why they are using Facebook was to maintain a conection with their friends and they had noticed the national political question more than the international political question. .

AbstractParticiapation from the citizens in a democratic society is one of the ground pilars for the function of the democratic society. The goal for the Swedish contemporary democracy is to complement the representative democracy with different kinds of participatory activities for the citizens. But is it working? The purpose of this essay is to exame the problems that might occur when the citizens participate in a wider extent than just voting. The focus is problems connected to the democratic value political equality.

A group of scientist, called the council of democracy in Sweden made a predictionabout members of political parties, in 2013 members should not exist. In this essaythat statement going to be questioned. It shows that most of the political parties losesmembers in Sweden. The only differences from year 2000 and now is that in 14 yearsthe parties has lost 65000 members, between 1991-1999 it was about 220000members. Something has changed.