Muslimska ungdomars relation till religion och modernitet i Sverige och Danmark : En genomgång av två aktuella studier

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores how Muslim youths’ lifeworlds are depicted and narrated in the following two studies on Muslim youth in Sweden and Denmark: Muslima (2007) and Samtidsislam (2010). The aim of this thesis is to answer the following question: In what ways do these works treat the aspects of the lifeworlds that are being highlighted in their studies of Muslim youth in contemporary Sweden and Denmark? An underlying aim is to analyse the results within the framework of theories of socialisation, cultural emancipation and rituals and traditions. With a hermeneutic approach I analyse the texts and operationalize the research question into four themes: the effects of socialization, cultural emancipation, rituals and traditions and secularization. The texts are treated in the analysis with textual analysis and hermeneutic method. The theoretical frame assumes socialization theory, the theory of cultural emancipation, a theoretical statement about traditions and rituals. Pia Karlsson Mingantis’s study Muslima (2007) focuses on nine young women, who are engaged in the Islamic revival. The description of the young women’s life situation is quite complex and the encounter with the Swedish context induces negotiations between Islamic traditions and the secular culture in the majority society. In Jonas Otterbeck & Peter Hallin’s study Samtidsislam (2010) nine Muslim youths’ situations are described. The informants view themselves as Muslims, but do not exercise Islam with quite much engagement. There are a lot of conflicts between the Islamic tradition and the Danish and Swedish majority culture. The youth are being in a uncertain position in the search of an identity. The conflicts and religious questions that are raised in the encounter with the Swedish and Danish context is not interpreted differently by the informants than other questions connected to youths’ identity construction and other questions related to the transition into adulthood. The conclusion that is being made in relation to the study of the texts is that the narratives produced by both the authors are different. The differences in the narratives depend on different samples and different aims of the two studies.