This paper deals with how eight Syriac adolescents and young adults have experienced Swedish religious education (RE) in secondary and upper secondary school about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The study reveals that four of the eight respondents experienced tensions and conflicts between Syriac and Muslims students. Two of these respondents revealed experiences of witnessing Syriac students ostracising and subjecting Muslim students to offensive treatment (kränkande behandling). These tensions and conflicts must be understood in the light of the historical and yet ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Turkey. For the Syriacs, these tensions culminated in Seyfo (the Assyrian genocide) in the midst of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, four respondents experienced a frustration that Seyfo was not addressed in neither RE nor history, while the Holocaust is an obligatory part of the Swedish syllabus. Seemingly, this fact furthered these respondents’ frustration. Therefore the respondents argued that Seyfo must be addressed in Swedish RE. The experiences of RE that adressed Judaism in part tell stories of how it triggered anti-Semitic speech, on part of Muslim students and one teacher. The RE on Christianity was partly experienced as having a liberal secular post-Christian perspective as its vantage point. The way Islam was taught was experienced as romanticised, and also proved at times to be essentialist in regards to its perspective.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-180713 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Magnusson, Erik |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för de humanistiska och samhällsvetenskapliga ämnenas didaktik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0027 seconds