Discourses among Danish Muslims - the link between terror and Islam

Vestergaard, Stine

4. term

Global Refugee Studies, Master

2015

2015-12-17

120 pages

In the recent years there has been an increased focus on the linkage between the concept of terror and Islam as religion. In the aftermath of terror attacks on the ground of western countries by perpetrators of Islamic background, the puplic debate has been highly affected by a focus on the perpetrators religion, and it have lead to negative consequences for resident muslim citizens in western countries. Research shows that some of the main effects of terror, is not the attack it self, but the aftermath of the attack, i.e. how we understand and talk about it. This articulation of terror events, the way we speak about it, shapes our reality and our society henceforth. A key agent in this articulatory practice is the Muslims resident in western countries as they are important contributer to the debate. The constructed link between terror and islam, urges the muslims to re-define and re-articulate their religion and what it means to be a muslim in western societies if not understood as related to terrorism, but as a concrete case of a terror attack in Denmark and the public debate afterwards shows, there are no consensus about this among the Danish muslim. Thus, the focus for this thesis is to investigate how these specific terrors attack in Denmark are being articulated among Danish Muslim, and furthermore, to examine how these articulation affect affect our reality and society henceforth. Methodological this is examined through the study of empirical material that are formed by various text from the puplic debate in the time after the attack. These texts are sorted and grouped so they represents different Muslim Voices, each representing a varity of discourses about terror and religion. The theoretical approach is discourse theory, mainly by the application of Faircloughs critical discourse analysis to the empirical material, but furthermore by incooperation his key concepts, hegemony and ideology, along with an Foucaltian view on power, in order to discuss how the results of the textual and intertextual analysis of the text, affects and forms the social practice that the discourses is a part of, i.e. the Danish muslim society. Through this analysis and discussion, the present thesis shows how there is a social struggle over power to define what a Danish muslim is between the different muslim voices, shaped by the struggle between the different discourses but also working the opposide way and is part of shaping the discourses in the public debate.

Discourse ; Fairclough ; terror ; Denmark ; muslim

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