Lära om eller från islam? : – om möjligheterna att använda muslimska hemsidor i religionsundervisningen i den svenska skolan.

Abstract

In a Swedish classroom today there will be students with different ethnicities, world views and religious beliefs. The students will be taught religion through a non-denominational education, where as a teacher you are meant to be objective, open-minded and fair in the representation of different traditions. This representation is colored by the outsider-perspective and the students then learn about religion from a party which is not involved in the religion being taught. This essay discusses how to balance the outsider-perspective in religious education in the Swedish school with insider-voices. More specific, the use of Muslim websites when teaching about Islam. The material this essay studies are three Muslim websites: al-islam.se, islaminfo.se and islamguiden.se. In order to make a didactic analysis of the websites, they are compared to a standard Swedish textbook. The method being used to do the analysis is a text analysis with a didactic point of view. The essay focuses on questions of the websites presentation of Islam, claim of truth and discussion on the negative image of Islam by the West. The essay shows that websites is a good alternative method in the process of balancing the outsider-perspective but requires conscious didactic choices and the need to teach the students about source criticism. The websites, because of their insider-voices, will need to be analyzed and explained to the students to keep the classroom environment non-denominational.