Representations of Muslims and Islam in Perussuomalainen, the Newsletter of the (True) Finns Party

Sammanfattning: In 2015, the European Union experienced the arrival of more than 1.25 million refugees at its borders, many of whom were looking for international protection from war, violence, and persecution. The number of asylum seekers in Finland rose almost tenfold in 2015 compared to years prior to 2015. While a vast majority of asylum seekers came from Muslim dominant countries from the wider MENA region, the influx of refugees became to be associated with the increasing occurrence of terrorist attacks in Europe, especially by the populist radical right (PRR). This study inquires how Muslims and Islam are being represented by the Finns Party, defined as a PRR party, through the asylum seeker discourse. While existing literature related to the topic states that the Finns Party has a long history of individual MPs and party members making Islamophobic statements, the party leadership has declined to take responsibility for these statements, denying that these attitudes are representative of the party. Thus, this thesis aims to analyse how Islam and Muslims are represented by a unified voice of the party. Through an analysis of the dynamics and construction of in-groups and out-groups, this thesis pursues to illustrate that the Finns Party constructs an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy, where the categories Islam, Muslims, and asylum seeker is constructed as representing a “meta-discourse” of the other.