The present thesis deals with Qur'anic Studies among Turkish immigrants inSweden. The aim is to investigate the significance of Qur'anic Studies forMuslims in a country like Sweden. This thesis also highlights the role ofthe Turkish state in encouraging and funding Qur'anic Studies in Sweden.I have carried out a case study on a Mosque outside Stockholm, where anImam, sent by the Turkish government, is in charge of the Qur'anic Studies.It is found that Qur'anic Studies is important for Muslims in Sweden in theirefforts to preserve their religious identity. The results also indicate thatQur'anic Studies also has an ideological dimension insofar as it is a meansfor Islamic governments, groups and individuals to further the interests of political Islam..

This thesis examines the Swedish Democrats relationship to an islamophobic worldview. The party developed from the racist party Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish) and is today the third largest party in Sweden, which gives them a powerful position in the society. It is therefore important to investigate their view on minorities, and in this case Muslims. In this thesis I examine the Swedish Democrat?s material during the election campaign the years of 2006, 2010 and 2014 using Ernesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?s discourse theory.

The topic of homosexuality was until recently a taboo in Russian public discussion, but has during the last years become a hotly debated issue. Analyzing what I call the new homophobic narrative I isolate and examine two ways of ?othering? homosexuals, constructing them as strangers, when sexual minorities are discussed in today´s Russia. Sexual deviants are portrayed as threats to the nation and are connected to the West and its influence. Using analytical tools from queer theory, security studies and postcolonial approaches I discuss different ways of configuring the relation between nation and sexuality, identities that are interwoven in the homophobic narrative.

This paper is about cemetaries in a multireligious society. The aim of the work is to compare the physical expressions of different religions burial traditions, in order to plan a multireligious cemetary in Borås. I´ve studied the five worldreligions, Judaism, Chritstianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. I´ve also written about the Humanism, a nonreligious organization, and funerals without any religious connection. Litterature studies gave basic knowledge about the religions beliefs, and interviews with a person from each group deepend the knowledge, mainly regarding the burial traditions.

EU is an organization that has expanded really fast during the last years. When you read about different EU membership processes you notice that some processes have been much faster than others. Spontaneously you think that this depends om that some countries have not been fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria. However, during the last decennium some scientists have written articles about motives that have affected the membership processes. The basic problem in my essay is how we are supposed to understand a membership process? Since I was interested in if I could see the same inconsistent behavior pattern in other membership processes I chose to study Turkey and Croatia.

The aim of this study is to examine the democratization process of Kosovo in the years after the countries independence was assured. Two central questions for the case study consist of whether a democratic improvement in the country has occurred and which factors, positive and negative, are present to further improve or impede the democratizationprocess. The study builds upon two central definitions, democratic states and democratization in order to gain theoretical background to be able to measure these two quite abstract expressions. A socioeconomic model is used to measure favorable or negative developments within Kosovos society and the findings of this model confirms the hypothesis of modernization theory, namely that increased socioeconomic development increases the chance of a positive democratizationprocess. There has been a positive democratic development aswell as socioecomic progress but since the nature of this study is merely descriptive and not explanatory, it doesnt make claims on the explanatory power of modernization theory.

This thesis is concerned with political mobilization and the construction of a collective andsocial identity. The main purpose of the study is theoretical which emphasize their interaction.In order to do this I study the two phenomenons by seeing them as cases of each other. Wecannot understand one of the two phenomenons without taking into account the other as well.In addition, the secondary aim of my thesis is empirical. I use the political transformationduring the 70th and 80th on the eastern seaboard of Nicaragua to relate my theoretical analysisof political mobilization and the construction of identities. Nicaragua will provide mytheoretical analysis with new insights.

This essay takes its start in the problematic situation concerning source material in the study of the Norse religion before the Christianization of Scandinavia. There is a lack of written sources from the time when the religion was still practiced. There are plenty of archeological sources economic situation than their religious beliefs. The Icelandic stories written in the 13th and 14th centuries give us a broad pictureof the Norse mythology, but the writers were Christians which makes their reliability questionable.The focus of this essay is therefore on two texts written during the time when the Norse religion was still in practice. The first source is the travel notes written in 922 by the Muslim scholar Ahmad ibn Fadlan who met a group of the Rus? people.

Sekularisering fortsätter att drabba kyrkan i både öst och väst. Uppsatsen behandlar sekulariseringsteorier utifrån ett bibliskt perspektiv. Hypotesen är att Jesus Kristus är kyrkan som kropp. Detta kyrkobegrepp har förändrats. Även budskapet och pedagogiken har påverkats.Fältarbete har genomförts i både Egypten och i Sverige.

The aim of the paper is to examine how public libraries can develop their services for children with ethnic minority backgrounds as a user group. This is achieved through studying the conditions for library services provided for children aged 9-12 in this group by public libraries in suburbs densely populated with ethnic minorities. The paper uses both a literature review and empirical research on the community libraries in Rinkeby and Rosengård as well as the town library in Lund. Services potentially available to these groups are analysed and discussed in the later chapters. The overall conclusion is that those services provided for ethnic minority children are largely the same as those provided for in children library services in general.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons a religious minority leader has to convert to a larger religious group and how the leader chooses to communicate this event in certain daily press. In March 2014 the leader and founder of the Christian and charismatic movement ?Livets Ord? (Words of Life), Ulf Ekman, announced his decision converting to the Roman Catholic Church after a 10 year long process of thinking. The communications of Ekman?s linguistic language in the articles are discussed through two discourse analyzing perspective, Laclau & Mouffe?s and Fairclough?s.

The purpose of this essay is to examine what literary heritage teachers communicate in the school subject Swedish at upper secondary school. The overall research question for this work is: Which authors and/or works are mentioned by the teachers in the school subject Swedish at upper secondary school? How well do these authors and/or works answer towards a multicultural perspective? Which factors affect teachers´ selections of texts? Based on this purpose and these research questions, the aim is to answer the didactic question of what.To accomplish the purpose of the study a quantitative method has been used. The survey was conducted in two medium-sized cities in central Sweden, and was answered by 17 teachers. The study shows that the teachers ascribe the Western and Swedish literature great importance.

I denna uppsats undersöker jag relationen mellan känsla av sammanhang (KASAM) och styrkan i den religiösa tron (SCSORF) genom en enkätundersökning genomförd utifrån ett bekvämt urval. Resultatet från undersökningen visade att ingen korrelation föreligger mellan KASAM och SCSORF och att styrkan i den religiösa tron därför inte kan antas påverka KASAM. Dock innebär urvalsmetoden och storleken på urvalet (n = 22) att denna slutsats är osäker och att en större undersökning med bättre forskningsdesign behövs för att slutligen kunna fastställa om styrkan i den religiösa tron påverkar KASAM..

The aim for this bachelor thesis is to find an answer for the placement of Migration and Vendel period graves on preexisting house constructions in Sweden. The reason behind these graves being built on their respective places will be analyzed, discussed and compared with similar finds in Scandinavia, where a wide contact net had been established during this time. Different kinds of social and religious meanings and functions with the grave mounds will also be taken into consideration during the discussion and analysis. The actual findings in the graves will be not be a part of this thesis, as the aim is to focus more on the grave itself as a cultural and social symbol for the people, and the values it had, during the time period it was built..

The objective of the essay has been the studying of the importance of religion for children. To answer and satisfy my objective, I have some questions: How do children talk about their own and others? religions? In what way do children associate themselves to religion? Which meaning does religion have for children?s identities? Which thoughts rise about religiontuition in the school?To answer the problem formulation, I have done a qualitative interview study with five children of different religious and cultural backgrounds in a Swedish communal school. The results showed that children?s thoughts about religion are mostly inherited from the parents.