This study concerns factors which might lead young Muslims in minority communities in Sweden towards a Salafist understanding of the Islamic message. Previous research, particularly in psychology and psychiatry, highlights adolescent-specific factors such as psychological vulnerability with possible depression, including death wishes, as well as social factors such as family dysfunction and discrimination, as being crucial. The aim of this study is to take a minority perspective in discussing possible reasons for, and consequences of, young members of minorities’ self-distancing from the majority society. The theoretical framework employed is identity formation. The study relies on participation in Muslim communities, interviews with Muslims conducted in the south of Sweden from the late 1980 onwards, and literature and newspaper articles written by or about youths with immigrant backgrounds.

The results of the study indicate that the non-extremist Muslim parent generation’s relationship with the majority society during their children’s formative years might influence these children’s attitudes towards the majority society as they grow older. Muslim immigrants’ insecurity in the new society is conveyed to and transformed by the next generation, and may play an unintentional role in young Muslims turning to Salafist understandings of the Islamic message.

Furthermore, the Swedish policy of ‘diversity’ (‘Mångfald’) tends to create fertile ground for this understanding, as it creates majority acceptance of the Muslim parent generation staying apart from the majority society and raising the next generation with little or no loyalty to the majority society.

Review of Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture: Women and Silence, by Georgina L. Jardim, Farnham, UK, Ashgate, 2014, 256 pp., £70.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4724-2637-6

Artikeln handlar om hur studenter i östra Amman i Jordanien upplever relationen mellan global television och sociala förändringar i genus relationer. Studien bygger på en enkät besvarat av 946 muslimska studenter, fokusgrupp diskussioner och individuella intervjuer med 44 muslimska studenter i 2009, 2010 och 2013. Materialet analyseras i ljus av kultivationsteori, moralpanik- och receptionsteori. Studien visar att många studenter menar att TV-tittande gör att många ser "verkligheten" genom televisionsprogrammen de ser på. En annan konklusion av studien är att många studenter tolkar televisionsprogrammen så att de kan ge dem möjlighet att klarar av sina egna liv. En tredje konklusion är att många studenter upplever moralisk panik och ser det globaliserade televisionsutbudet som ett attack på kulturella värden. Andra studenter igen tycker att det de uppfattar som det liberala budskapet i det globaliserade utbudet är positivt för den sociala utvecklingen i Jordanien. Många studenter upplever att det turkiska och amerikanska utbudet har en påverkan på genusrelationer i deras lokala samhälle. Denna påverkan uppfattas av många som "positivt" och av andra som "negativt".

This article explores how students living in East Amman in Jordan perceive a link between global television entertainment and social changes, particularly changes in gender relations. The study relies on a questionnaire distributed among university students in Amman in 2009 and 2010 with 946 Muslim respondents, and focus group discussions and individual interviews with 44 Muslim students living in East Amman in 2013. The theoretical framework for the discussion is cultivation theory, moral panic, and audience reception. The main conclusion from this study is that many students believe that watching television makes viewers see ‘reality’ in view of TV programs. Another conclusion is that students seem to tailor their use of television according to their own needs. A third conclusion is that many students experience moral panic and see global television as an attack on cultural values. Other students, however, welcome global television’s transmission of what they consider new liberal ideas. The students’ experience is that television entertainment products such as Turkish and American films and series, have an actual impact on social changes linked to gender relations in the East Amman society. The impact of global TV on local society is envisioned as being either “good” or “bad”.

Denna artikel handlar om hur islamistiska och islam-orienterade kvinnor på Västbanken upplever "islam", i frågar som hur kvinnor socialiserar och i relationer mellan män och kvinnor. Studien bygger på ett intervjumaterial där kvinnor berättar om vad Islam betyder för dem. Detta intervjumaterial analyseras genom begreppen "empowerment" och "agency", särskilt Kockelman's definition av "agency" som "flexibilitet" och "ansvarighet". Intervjuerna gjordes 2010 och 2011 och jag deltog i många religiösa möter i moskéer och i privata hem. Studien visar att kvinnorna, särskilt pga att Västbanken är i en post-konflikt process, har brist på flexibilitet, i meningen alternativa valmöjligheter. Detta grundar sig i familjelagstiftningen, i kulturella attityder gentemot kvinnor och genusrelationer och att kvinnor till stor del är ekonomisk beroende av sina män. Kvinnorna menade att islam gav dem frid, samt gav möjlighet till ett starkt kvinnogemenskap. De islamistiska och islam-orienterade kvinnorna var aktiva både i islamiska religiösa sammankomster och de jobbade aktivt i islamiska välfärdsorganisationer fram till att Palestinska myndigheter förbjöd dessa aktiviteter. Förbudet gav därför de islamistiska kvinnorna mindre flexibilitet.

1. This article investigates into Islamist and Islamic-oriented women’s experience of ‘Islam’ in the West Bank, particularly as it comes to female networking and the relation between men and women. The empirical material for the present study is centered on the women’s perceptions of the role of ‘Islam’ in their daily life. The empirical material is analyzed in view of the theoretical concepts of ‘empowerment’ and ‘agency’, particularly using Kockelman’s definition of ‘agency’ as ‘flexibility’ and ‘accountability’. The empirical material is gathered in 2010 and 2011 in two towns in the West Bank with in-depth interviews with nine women and observation in several religious meetings in mosques and in private homes. The result of the study indicates that Islamist women in the West Bank, particularly due to the post-conflict process of the region, have little flexibility, i.e., alternative choices. This is mainly due to family legislation, cultural attitudes to gender roles and gender relations, and women being economical dependent on their husbands. The women claimed Islam to be a means of giving peace, tranquility of mind, and a strong social female network. However, the Palestinian Authorities prohibition of Islamic lectures and Islamic welfare organizational activities, in which women played an important role, has had a disempowering effect on Islamist and Islamic-oriented women in the contemporary West Bank.

Religious programs on various Arab satellite channels have been on the increase during the last decade, a time also of increasing political and social contestation. National as well as satellite television, including al-Jazeera, feature daily or weekly religious programs. Additionally there are also dedicated “religious channels” with a variety of religiously oriented programming. One such channel is the Egyptian Maria Channel, where women wear face-veils, launched in 2012. This channel—and some of the religious programs on other channels featuring women—deals particularly with “religious” matters (‘ibadat): how women should pray and fast or how women should educate children, and so on. However, in some religious programs, male and female scholars participate together, and jointly discuss various issues and issue fatwas on the air. This chapter will investigate some religious programs that have female presenters. It will look at which issues have become “women’s issues” in this new dissemination of religious knowledge, and whether and how “female” fatwas tend to differ from those of male scholars, and some of the implications of this for the nature of the contemporary public sphere in the Arab world. 

This book addresses the roles of various media in the shaping and active contestation of particular conflicts and political agendas in the Arab world. Interdisciplinary contributions examine the sociopolitical dynamics generated in and through media, with perspectives emerging from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, and political science. This book explores both new media and older media forms and formats including the press, satellite television, Facebook, Web 2.0 technology, posters, and music videos. Topics range across the politics of popular culture, women scholars' religious fatwas, the Palestinian visual public sphere, Hezbollah's media policy, women's presence on Arab satellite television, and the uses of Facebook in the Tunisian revolution. Contributors include such well-known scholars as Charles Hirschkind, Marwan Kraidy, Amahl Bishara, and Olfa Lamloum.

This article discusses how the discourse of multiculturalism affects religious and cultural changes in the Muslim communities in Sweden and Norway, particularly with reference to gender and gender relations. Although the two societies have few multicultural policies, the discourse on multiculturalism has still led to claims for legal pluralism. However, it seems that there is an obvious change of attitudes to such claims between the first-generation Muslim immigrants and their descendants, second-generation Norwegian and Swedish Muslims.

In this article polygyny is used to illustrate how the ideal of benevolent patriarchy and the “good” Muslim man as the benevolent patriarch tends to create a discrepancy between the legal and the moral in Islamic legislation as well as in Islamic discourse. The study is based on fieldwork in the West Bank in 2011 when 49 Islamist and Islamic-oriented women were interviewed. The main finding of this study is that Islamist women tend to accept the Islamic gender system as the divine will, and they also accept its legal expression, Personal Status Law. However, there is a little awareness of the lack of legal consequences for men who do not behave according to the moral code, which is not explicitly but only implicitly assumed in the law.