Abstract

This article examines the experiences of Norwegian high school girls with Muslim backgrounds in learning about Islam in religious education (RE). The empirical material consists of observations from a high school class in Norway and interviews with girls in the class. The findings support previous reports that Islam as a topic may be challenging for students with Muslim backgrounds. They also suggest that the RE classroom is a space where religious boundaries can go from blurred to bright as a result of students’ reactions to educational content and its foci on Islam. As many teachers find the topic of Islam potentially controversial and thus challenging to teach, this article offers insights that may help teachers to understand and deal with students’ reactions in the classroom context.

Highlights

  • I know that there’s a shitload of people abusing Islam

  • Through analysis and discussions of the empirical material, this study has shown how contesting religion causes religious boundaries that generally appear as blurred or non-existent at school to become bright in religious education (RE) class (Alba 2005)

  • This is based on how some girls actively take on, or are implicitly given, roles as representatives for Islam and the Muslim community, which entails a burden of responsibility (Zine 2017)

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Summary

Introduction

I know that there’s a shitload of people abusing Islam. Islamists. This article uses the aforementioned theoretical concepts to unpack and discuss how the girls’ actions, and how the girls explain their negative reactions and actions in class, can be understood in the light of previous research findings on minorities’ experiences from the mediated public sphere (and more generally on social dynamics in the larger society). Further, how their contestations seem to affect the religious boundaries in class

Methods
Analysis and discussion
Concluding remarks
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