This essay is a comparative analysis of ideas about how Islamic terrorism is understood in terms of narrative. The narrative being studied is Occidentalism, Orientalism and postcolonial theory; based on these perspectives are possible explanations analyzed of what Islamic terrorism is all about..

During the colonial period Europeans travelled to Egypt. The French had explored Egypt through the mapping and this was published in a collection of books called Déscription de l?Égypte. Exhibitions and publications like Déscription de l?Égypte, which aimed at giving a view of Egypt, raised public interest for journeys to the Orient.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

Presentations of Oriental people as subordinated the West and their ideals was one way for Europeans to expand and keep control over their colonies in Africa during the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries. France and Great Britain controlled their colonies in different ways which has led to diverse legacies. Today, tourism is a source of revenue for former colonies, such as Tunisia and Kenya, and tourism also helps to spread knowledge and images of distant countries. A guidebook is one way that knowledge of other countries and people are spread to travelers. During history, images of distant people were based on a colonial discourse in which the west was seen as superior; but is that still the case? The purpose of this paper was to analyze how Tunisia and Kenya are presented in the Lonely Planet guide to Tunisia and the Lonely Planet guide to Kenya to investigate if they are constructed through a colonial discourse, and to see if there are any dissimilarities on how they are presented.

The purpose of this study was to identify the way in which history textbooks from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s used for grades 7-9 depicts World War II from a eurocentric perspective. A qualitative textual analysis was used to achieve the purpose. Three history textbooks from each decade was included in the study, also comparisons have been made to see any changes over time. The study used John M. Hobson matrix describing how the Occident and the Orient are defined from a eurocentric perspective.