This dissertation examines how Indian Muslim thinkers participated in and contributed to regional and global debates about the concept of minority as a category of governance and identity constituted through law, politics, and daily life. Focusing on the period from the end of the Crimean War in 1856 to the 1947 partition of India, it follows the writings of Islamic modernists, a transregional group of thinkers who championed an egalitarian view of Islam as an alternative vision for universal rights and ethics. Using periodicals, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, treatises, official documents, and other sources (mainly in Urdu, Arabic, Russian, and, English, and, to a lesser extent, in Persian, Hebrew, and French) mostly from archives and libraries across India, Britain, and Israel/Palestine, this dissertation traces how Britain’s classification of Indian Muslims as a minority put them at the center of global conversations about rights, citizenship, and emancipation. It also shows how South Asian Islamic modernists, in dialogue with one another and political and intellectual projects across the British Empire, Khedival Egypt, Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East, Tsarist Empire, and Soviet Russia and Central Asia, formulated novel modes of belonging that challenged both colonial rule and national territorial partitions. The concept of a Muslim minority emerged in the context of the trans-imperial “Muslim Question”—i.e., how European powers sought to “manage” Muslim subjects, and how Muslims responded to such politics and sought to transform them. After the Crimean War (1853-56), Britain began to link its governance over Muslims in the Indian subcontinent to its diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire and Khedival Egypt. On the one hand, British officials now invoked their status as rulers over the largest Muslim population in the world to increase their influence in Ottoman and Egyptian politics. On the other hand, these officials pointed to their military and diplomatic support of Ottoman sovereignty in the Crimean War in an attempt to win over “Indian Muslim public opinion.” At the same time, by creating the categories of “Muslim minority” and “Hindu majority” through technologies of enumeration and identification, most notably the All-India Census of 1871-1872, Britain quantified and politicized religious difference among Indians. Amidst these upheavals, Islamic scholars and activists in North India joined hands and articulated new visions of rights, identity, and unity across difference. However, this was not only a subcontinental story. Rather than historicizing the minority question only via European imperial or local lenses, this dissertation breaks new ground by showing how Islamic modernists interpreted, applied and produced models of mutilingualism, multiconfessionalism, and federalism from and across the British, Ottoman, and Tsarist empires and Khedival Egypt, and, after 1917, Soviet Russia and Central Asia to challenge both imperial and national “solutions” to the minority question. Taking an interdisciplinary view of “minority” as a complex interplay between demography, bureaucracy, discourse, practice, and experience, “Recasting Minority” argues that the concept of minority structured core debates about and in modern South Asia and the Middle East and their transregional linkages, from the conception of halal meat, to questions of Arabic as a language of belonging for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to the creation of anticolonial solidarities. In so doing, this dissertation questions the dominant historiography that binds minority within European genealogies of nation-state formation and politicization of religious difference. Rather than regarding minority solely as a persecuted group or a predicament produced by “secular governance,” this dissertation shows that the emergence of this concept in trans-imperial geopolitics, and the precarious position of Muslims working within and beyond them, enabled Islamic modernists to produce alternative visions of sovereignty, religious difference, and worldmaking. In so doing, my dissertation synthesizes the global intellectual history of the concept of minority with the socio-political and cultural history of South and West Asia and Eurasia, helping explain the enduring potency of this concept in these regions today.

Syftet med detta arbetet är att undersöka vad olika böcker och forskningsartiklar tar upp om islamofobi. Ytterligare ett syfte med uppsatsen har varit att undersöka hur man kan arbeta och motverka förekomsten av islamofobi inom skolans ramar. För att kunna uppfylla dessa syften har följande frågeställningar framställts: Vad är islamofobi och vad är orsakerna bakom det? Förekommer islamofobi i skolan, och isåfall på vilka sätt förekommer det? Försöker lärare reducera förekomsten av islamofobi i skolan, och om det sker, hur kan man arbeta för att reducera islamofobi i klassrummet? Metoden som har använts i detta arbete har varit informationssökning. För att kunna finna relevant litteratur och kunna besvara dessa frågeställningar har databaserna Education Research Complete (ERC), Eric via Ebsco och SwePub använts i detta arbete. Genom detta har vi kunnat samla in empirin och därefter kommit fram till resultaten till våra frågeställningar. Islamofobi innebär rädsla för muslimer, och det finns olika orsaker bakom det, bland annat medias negativa porträttering av islam och muslimer. Detta leder till att det uppstår olika stereotyper och fördomar om islam och muslimer, vilket i sin tur leder till förekomsten av islamofobi. Inom skolans ramar förekommer islamofobi, bland annat i form av kränkande yttranden och behandlingar. Enligt skollagen råder det nolltolerans gentemot kränkande behandlingar och diskriminering inom skolans ramar och därmed försöker lärare och skolor reducera förekomsten av islamofobi. Detta kan ske på olika sätt, bland annat genom att uppmuntra de som blir utsatta att berätta för lärare, så att de kan göra en kränkningsanmälan. Ytterligare ett sätt är att förse eleverna med adekvat information om islam och muslimska sedvänjor, i syfte av att motverka fördomar och medias negativa framställning av muslimer.

The publication of Qur’an commentaries authored by contemporary Muslims provide glimpses into influential trends that have been competing for the attention of contemporary Muslims. This dissertation primarily examines three works of Qur’anic translation and exegesis (Ar. Tafsīr) in the English language. These works are representative of three influential trends or schools of thought in contemporary Islam: an “Islamist” or “Activist” trend represented by Abu’l ‘Ala Mawdudi, a rationalist-modernist trend represented by Muhammad Asad, and a Salafi trend represented by the Mubarakpūrī English abridgement of the medievalist Ibn Kathīr's hadith-based tafsir. These commentators often engage earlier Qur’anic commentaries and make choices about which voices and positions from the “classical legacy” they foreground, highlighting what they believe may resonate with their readers. The first chapter provides an historical overview to some of the major trends in Qur’anic exegesis. The second chapter provides background on the commentators, including the social and political contexts of the commentators as well as their education and important aspects of their careers. The third and fourth chapters focus on two chapters of the Qur’an (Q12 and Q18) as these appear in the three commentaries, highlighting how modern commentators reflect their own concerns and context and their various reform projects in their interpretations of Muslim scripture. I supplement the main three commentators with a sample of contemporary living voices who also comment on these two Qur’anic chapters to highlight how Muslims continue to reinterpret the Qur’anic texts in relation to what they see as most relevant and meaningful. Chapter five looks at how these works have been received and considers how they offer a window into the contestation taking place in contemporary Islam. I conclude with a reflection upon my own teaching of these two chapters in a university setting. While the Islamic scholarly traditions and Qur’anic commentaries are a multilayered, polyvalent tradition, these traditions are often (unfortunately) truncated by many contemporary Muslims. I try to highlight certain areas where the contemporary commentaries are, on the one hand, generally narrower than the rich polyvalent traditions of the premodern exegetical tradition, but on the other hand, move in new directions as Muslims today relate their readings of scripture to contemporary concerns. This analysis of contemporary Qur’anic commentaries and their commentators moves beyond freezing Muslims into the fixed category of the “premodern.” Though the three commentaries were chosen to be representative of three important trends in modern Islam, the dissertation is also careful to show that the boundaries between these approaches are often fluid, providing concrete examples of how contemporary Muslims are reinterpreting Muslim scripture, affirming and selecting from the premodern tradition, critical of certain aspects of that tradition, and also adding their own voices to make the Qur’anic text speak to their modern situations.

Denna uppsats ämnar att studera ungdomars upplevelser av att leva som muslimer i Sverige, bemötandet av människor i förhållande till deras religion samt hur detta påverkar deras känsla av tillhörighet till Sverige. Datamaterialet har samlats in med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta unga muslimer som har en icke-europeisk bakgrund. Studien använder de teoretiska begreppen rasifiering och tillhörighet. Resultatet i studien visar på att de unga muslimerna har upplevt en svårighet att utöva sin religion i Sverige, exempelvis när det kommer till att finna tid för bönen, att fasta samt ha tillgång till halalmat. Upplevelse av negativt bemötande i form av främlingsfientlighet, rasism samt diskriminering i relation till deras religion och etnicitet var även förekommande för flera av intervjupersonerna. Samtliga unga muslimer uttryckte att detta haft en påverkan på deras tillhörighetskänsla i Sverige då de till varierande grad upplevde en känsla av exkludering från det svenska samhället. Däremot har flera av intervjupersonerna funnit en samhörighet med andra individer i de egna bostadsområdena som befinner sig i en liknande situation som de själva när det kommer till tro och etnicitet. / This study aims to examine young people’s experiences of living as Muslims in Sweden, treatment from other people in relation to their religion and how it affects their feeling of belonging in Sweden. The data material has been collected through semi-structured interviews with eight young Muslims with a non-European background. The study uses the theoretical concepts of racialization and belonging.The results in the study shows that the young Muslims had experienced a difficulty in practicing their religion in Sweden for example when it comes to finding time for prayer, being able to fast and having access to halal food. The experience of being negatively met in the form of xenophobia, racism and discrimination in relation to their religion and ethnicity was also occurred among several of the interviewees. All the young Muslims expressed that this has influenced their sense of belonging in Sweden as they in varying degrees had felt a feeling of exclusion from the Swedish society. On the other hand, several of the interviewee shad found a community among other individuals in their neighborhoods who were in a similar situation in regard to their beliefs and ethnic background.

The content of the master these sis case study of counter-terrorism measures in th UK and their impact on human rights. The work detaily monitors the development of the counter-terrorist measureas after the 11th of September attacks in the USA. To uderstand the adoption of the legislative measures are used the optics of moral panic which intensify the fear of another attacks. The work analyzes in detail how the measures developed and what is their impact on human rights. It Appears there is consensus on the political spectrum about the aim of the counter-terrorism laws. In addition there are showed law suits presenting the real life struggle about the human rights. Since the UK was not long ago part of the EU text provides short examples on how i tis in other EU countries

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This thesis focuses on how Muslim Millennials in Canada and the United States navigate religious identities and research religious matters online. Their attendance and participation at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) convention - an annual conference in Toronto - illustrates their desire to meet in person even though they also engage in religious learning and activities online. Through qualitative interviews, I discover that these young Muslims find conducting Islamic research online to be convenient, however, their community needs are not fulfilled in the online Islamic world. Reviving the Islamic Spirit fulfills this need for in-person engagement by creating a suitable environment allowing Muslims to interact with religious authority figures from online spaces. Reviving the Islamic Spirit also allows Muslims to feel a sense of belonging and community in an offline space. All the participants in this study turned to the online Islamic world in search of religious authority. For many Muslim communities, religious authority plays a large role in their everyday lives. Unlike other Muslim minority communities, Sunni Muslims cannot agree on central religious authority. They do not have a central authority figure who they can rely on for inquiring about religious matters. These needs of religious authority and community bring together Muslims at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention. I argue in this thesis that Reviving the Islamic Spirit creates a "convergent space." In this space, characteristics are highlighted from the online and offline worlds without erasing any of the original elements. Reviving the Islamic Spirit provides space that brings the online religious world into the present offline world, and this in turn influences religious behaviours and lived religious experiences. The research questions guiding this study were: 1) What attracts young Muslims to RIS? 2) Does participation at RIS influence online and offline religious behaviours? 3) How are digital elements of online religion (such as virtual religious practices and religious forum discussions) brought into offline spaces like RIS? and 4) What happens when the two physical and virtual religious spaces come together such as at the intersection at RIS? Participants were recruited from Reviving the Islamic Spirit where I was able to speak with attendees and set up a booth in the marketplace portion where people could approach me with interest about this study. The methodology included conducting 50 in-depth interviews and participant observation of attendees at RIS. The results indicate that Muslim Millennials were fascinated by "celebrity imams" such as Yasir Qadhi, Mufti Menk, Omar Suleiman, and Sohaib Webb. The results also verify that a 'convergence space' exists at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention.