Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world. © Carool Kersten and Susanne Olsson 2013. All rights reserved.

Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world.

Studies of the image of Muslims or 'the Other' in general have been done to a certain extent by Western scholars showing that stereotyped images have been prevalent. In the case of Islamic studies, the long tradition of Orientalist scholarship is a clear example of this, but, as researchers have shown, generalisations and stereotypes are still apparent in school textbooks. This article discusses some general and problematic areas that pertain to textbooks. The focus is on what critical issues we need to take into consideration when discussing or performing textbook production and how we can think about these.

Sekelskiftet 1900 var en brytningstid i flera avseenden, inte minst vad gäller synen på religion och religionens roll i samhället. Liberalteologi och historiekritisk bibelläsning skakade de teologiska seminarierna, samtidigt som kritiska röster såg religion som något bakåtsträvande och elitistiskt. I dessa strömningars mitt finner vi några av grundarna av Religionsvetenskapliga sällskapet i Stockholm: Nathan Söderblom, Lydia Wahlström, Samuel Fries och Gottlieb Klein. De värnade alla om ett religionsvetenskapligt perspektiv och utmanade gamla synsätt och auktoriteter.

American author Donald Moffitt's science fiction (SF) series The Mechanical Sky, consisting of two books, Crescent in the Sky (1989) and A Gathering of Stars (1990), portrays a universe where various religious denominations exist, and where an Islamic caliphate is established, aiming at universal Islamic dominance. The purpose of this article is to analyze the series pertaining to its representations of Islam and Muslims, and to explain the Islamic framing in contextualizing the series in the historical situation when the series was produced. Moreover, another aim of the article concerns the methodological problems that such an analysis of the Islamic framing may entail. The article calls for the need to reflect seriously on interpretative perspectives when a scholar in the study of religions enters the field of SF, which has its own definitional problems and genre-specific traits that must be taken into consideration.