Since the turn of the millennium, a recurring debate in the academic study of Islam and Muslims has centred on how to analyse the status and significance of religious practice, together with the interrelated questions and the new kinds of empirical material that this analysis entails. Scholars have debated how to characterize Muslim piety, how much attention should be given to its different forms (without, as Samuli Schielke puts it, letting “too much Islam” dominate the study of Muslims), and how such practices connect to other, less obviously religious aspects of Muslim life. While anthropologists have often been referred to as the key voices in this conversation, many researchers in other academic fields and with varying regional expertise have also contributed to developing tools and ideas.

As in the rest of Europe, the study of Islam and Muslims in Sweden was for a long time primarily the study of Oriental languages, especially Arabic, but also Persian and Turkic languages (i.e. Martin 1995; Nanji 1997). Already in 1624, Arabic is mentioned as one of the languages that the Professor in Hebrew (Hebreae Linguage Professor) was expected to teach at Uppsala University (Malmberg 2007: 19).[1] As pointed out by Håkan Malmberg, Hebrew, and partly also Aramaic and Syriac, were at the forefront, while Arabic was seldom studied neither as a living language nor for its own sake. The Bible and its cultural, linguistic and religious landscapes were the focus. This situation progressively changed, and the Arabic and Turkic languages (including Tataric languages) became essential disciplines for Sweden’s diplomatic contacts with the Tatar Khanates and the Ottoman Empire, as well as gradually becoming important for the general study of Oriental languages (Malmberg 2007; on the importance of Swedish diplomatic relations with the wider Muslim world, see Jarring 1987 and Östlund 2020).

In the present article, the authors argue that the study of Salafism as a contemporary Islamic new religious movement could benefit from an analytical perspective separating fundamentalism into the modes of inferentialism and deferentialism. The basics of these concepts are outlined and discussed in relation to different aspects of contemporary Salafism as well as in relation to previous tendencies in Islamic history. As a case study, the authors employ the concept in an analysis of a contemporary Swedish Salafi discourse on the ‘wiping of the (leather) socks’ in the context of ritual purity. The authors argue that the concept of ‘deferential fundamentalism’ has a potential in the study of Salafism in that it allows for comparative analysis, both cross-religiously and diachronically, in contextualising Salafism historically. It also allows for an analysis of Salafi thought and practice in relation to theories of how human beings in general process social information.

Projektet Wahhabism i Sverige - nätverk, praktiker och mission har genomförts av Susanne Olsson, Anne-Sofie Roald, Simon Sorgenfrei och Jonas Svensson. Resultaten från arbetet finns primärt redovisat i artiklar och bokkapitel, varav några är publicerade och andra under publicering i eller inskickade till peer-review tidskrifter och böcker. Dessa artiklar täcker in ett bredare område än det som redovisas nedan och innefattar också artiklar om t.ex. metoder för att analysera mediediskurs om “extrema” och “radikala” muslimer, ofta förekommande begrepp i akademiska och andra offentliga samtal om fundamentalistisk och politisk islam samt informationspåverkan i relation till muslimska ungdomar. Denna rapport är en sammanfattning av delar av forskningsinsatsen, genom att den översiktligt redogör för bakgrunden till projektets forskningsfokus och de resultat som uppnåtts. För den som önskar en helhetsbild av resultaten av forskningen hänvisas till de från projektet stammande vetenskapliga publikationerna vilka listas i slutet av rapporten. 

The article has a history of religions approach, and analyzes the counter-narrative of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is a global political Islamist group which aims to establish a universal caliphate. It is a vocal radical radical group, rejecting the use of violence. The group is against democracy, secularization and liberal values, and promotes a return to true Islam, which obliges Muslims to establish a caliphate, ruled by divine will. The analysis of the ideology will contextualize it within Islamic theology and other current interpretative Islamic currents that dominate, with the aim of explaining why they are banned in several countries.