Att framställa islam - En diskursanalys av tre universitetsläroböcker om islam
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, issues related to religion and violence has beenactualized in the media. Do Islamic texts and sources legitimate violent actions? In responseto these questions, some professional scholars of Islam argued that the 11 September terroristswere not really Muslims, but hijackers of Islam. According to other scholars, such argumentsreflect a common sui-generis discourse in religious studies which stresses the autonomy ofreligious phenomena, the priority of faith over cultural production, interior experiences andbeliefs over social practice. The scholars in favor for a naturalistic approach in religiousstudies argues that, in order to approach religion in a naturalistic way, we have to be critical ofrepresentations of religion ? and in this case representations of Islam ? drawing on a suigenerisdiscourse. The aim of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, it investigates, throughdiscourse analysis, how Islam is represented in textbooks used in religious studiesintroductory courses in Sweden. The paper shows how the textbooks draw on both sui-generisdiscourses and naturalistic discourses, although the sui-generis discourse is arguably thedominant one. On the other hand, the paper proposes alternative approaches to the study ofIslam which seeks to avoid problems associated with the sui generis discourse.