Anne Sofie Roald

• Global Political Studies

There is a common assumption that ‘Islam’ has an inherent opposition between the sacred and the secular which obstructs the secularisation process witnessed in western societies. This study argues that Weber’s notion of Protestant religion as a driving force in the rationalisation of society might be an indicator of how political Islam in itself in...

Religious programs on various Arab satellite channels have been on the increase during the last decade, a time also of increasing political and social contestation. National as well as satellite television, including al-Jazeera, feature daily or weekly religious programs. Additionally there are also dedicated “religious channels” with a variety of...

Denna artikel handlar om hur islamistiska och islam-orienterade kvinnor pa Vastbanken upplever "islam", i fragar som hur kvinnor socialiserar och i relationer mellan man och kvinnor. Studien bygger pa ett intervjumaterial dar kvinnor berattar om vad Islam betyder for dem. Detta intervjumaterial analyseras genom begreppen "empowerment" och "agency",...

This article discusses how the discourse of multiculturalism affects religious and cultural changes in the Muslim communities in Sweden and Norway, particularly with reference to gender and gender relations. Although the two societies have few multicultural policies, the discourse on multiculturalism has still led to claims for legal pluralism. How...

In this article polygyny is used to illustrate how the ideal of benevolent patriarchy and the “good” Muslim man as the benevolent patriarch tends to create a discrepancy between the legal and the moral in Islamic legislation as well as in Islamic discourse. The study is based on fieldwork in the West Bank in 2011 when 49 Islamist and Islamic-orient...

This article deals with the Muslim community in Sweden in view of the majority-minority dynamics with focus on how values, attitudes, behaviors, and practices of the Swedish majority influence Muslim minority communities and how majority society's approach to Muslims and Islam influences both the relationship Muslims have with non-Muslims and the u...

This study deals with stages in the process of conversion to Islam. However, unlike the extensive research on pre-conversion stages, this contribution looks at post-conversion development. The initial stage after conversion brings with it a zealotry in which converts tend to become ‘more royal than the king’. The second stage tends to be a period o...

This article discusses religion in public space and the case study is Muslim minorities in Sweden. The discussion deals with secularisation trends within Muslim communities in Swedish society in view of the notion of counter-secularisation as a fixed and unchanged form of religious expressions in contemporary public life. What happens in Muslim com...

This study deals with the Muslim Brotherhood's reception of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women) in Jordan. In view of the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) and interviews with several political actors in Jordanian society it is possible to evaluate Islamist ideas on women's rights. The main aim is...

Government policy since independence has by and large disregarded Sudan’s multi-religious character through continuous Islamisation and Arabisation processes that have fuelled the civil war. International considerations regarding religious pluralism and the accommodation of different religious communities were at the forefront in the peace negotiat...

In the Scandinavian countries, most immigrants have satellite dishes or they live in segregated areas where the cable company provides TV channels from the tenants' homelands. The author discusses a TV serial aired on various Arabic-language TV channels during Ramadan 2001. The TV serial deals with polygamy and it stirred emotions in many of the Mu...

The number of Muslims in Sweden has increased dramatically. Immigration from Muslim countries to Sweden began just after World War II, when Turkish-speaking Tartars came from Finland and Estonia. The Tartars established the first Islamic congregation in 1948. In the beginning of the 1960s, the first wave of Muslim labor immigrants entered Sweden. I...