”Nu när jag inte bor i Afghanistan kan jag välja bort min religion” : En fenomenologisk studie om sex ensamkommande afghaners förändrade religionsutövning efter ett tidsintervall i Sverige.

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to analyze how six Afghans perceive the practice of their religion after a time interval in Sweden and if their religious practice has changed. I refer to how the informants have exercised their religion in their home country based on food and drink rules as well as prayer and mosque visits, and compare how the exercise looks like in Sweden after three years. I used qualitative semi-structured interviews with a hermeneutic approach. The result showed that all informants experienced that their practice of religion has changed after the time interval in Sweden: it had diminished or decreased altogether, and religion was no longer a key factor in the informants' lives. The underlying factors for this were because the informants had lived in a country and society where religious practice was not something selectable and where factors such as school, education and economy were lower down on the list and religion in the first place. The organized and institutionalized religion that exists in Afghanistan and which is transferred from one generation to another, especially from older relatives and family, is something that the informants do not find in Sweden. In Sweden, religion is something that loses importance and religion is a private matter. It turns out that the informants feel free here in Sweden and that even though they belong to a minority group just like in their home country, they want to belong to a majority and adapt their religious practice to a post-modern society.