During the course of history, the world have come to see powerful nations rise and fall, religions spread and diminish – and all too often there have been violent struggles between religious groups and secular forces, a fact that we still see in our world today. In the West, we often hear about the violent and fundamental dimensions of Islam. Buddhism is rarely a part of the equation in a western context, regarding violence. A common perception is the picture of Buddhism as a guardian of non-violent principles and values. The central theme of this essay circuits around views on violence and warfare in the Sri Lankan context, where religion and violence have come to be intertwined, often with political overtones. With different theoretical frameworks and angles I have illustrated and analyzed how the historical development can be linked to classical buddhist sources and how some singalease buddhists make use of a mythical glorious past to justify violence and warfare against the tamil minority population. But like all religious traditions there are also counterforces and exceptions that diverge from the mainstream, which I have found importnant to illuminate. Religious phenomena can be a complex matter to investigate and trying to see the variations within a religious tradition can be difficult but one way to adress theese issues (when it comes to religion and violence in Sri Lanka) is to give diverse and multifaceted pictures of the conflict for when it comes to religion, there are never one-sided answers.

The purpose of this study to examine and compile qualitative articles to receive knowledge about the cultural and religious cognizance and also the understanding a nurse ought to have, when she meets and nurses dying patients from other cultures and religions than her own. We also had intention to find out which outlook Jews, Muslims and Buddhists have on dying and death associated with their own or death within family. / Syftet med studien var att granska och sammanställa kvalitativa artiklar för att få kunskap om vilken kulturell och religiös kunskap samt förståelse man som sjuksköterska bör ha, då man möter och vårdar döende patienter från andra kulturer och religioner än sin egen.Vi ville även få veta vilken syn judar, muslimer och buddhister har på döden och döendet i samband med sin egen eller sina anhörigas död.

For centuries Islam and Muslims have been subject to islamophobic attitudes in the west. The purpose with this study was to see into the making of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims from a conflict in southern Thailand, and also to so see if Muslims are portrayed as more violent than the Buddhist groups in the conflict. The aim of the study is also to see if Muslims fall into a violent stereotype. This was studied by looking at five Swedish newspapers coverage of the conflict, during a given time. To be able to look into this, two theories will be used, the first one is the Runnymede Trust theory, which is about open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims. The second one is Duncan’s violent stereotype theory, which will be used to see differences between the Muslims and the Buddhists when it comes to the use of violence, and also to see if Muslims are portrayed as a violent stereotyped group. The method was a psychology discourse method with a theory driven analysis with Template Analyze Style. The conclusion of the study was that there was a mix of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims, where the closed attitudes follow a pattern of earlier studies. Another conclusion from the study was that there are only small differences in the portraying of the different groups as more and less violent, where the Muslims tend to be portrayed as a bit more violent but the differences are small. And from that conclusion it is not possible from the material to say that there are any clear stereotypes of Muslims as a violent group.