From Muhammed to religious studies in upper secondary school

This essay is a qualitative textual analysis of six books used for religious studies in upper secondary schools. The aim was to study if and how a “correct Islam” is presented in the chapters about Islam, how that “correct Islam” matches the Swedish syllabus “Religionskunskap 1”, and how Muslim women are presented in books written after 2011. The applied theoretical frame for the study was “gender steps” and Hughes’ critic of studies of Islam. The results showed that few of the chosen authors reached the second step of the gender steps, the position based on how texts problematize the differences between men and women. The results also showed that elements of Hughes’ critic were found in the books. The authors sometimes expressed a correct Islam by presenting only one or few interpretations of the Quran. This didn’t always meet the aims of the syllabus. The books lack presentations of a variety of gender, socio-economical backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexualities. Muslim women were mainly presented in the text when they differed from religious practices