Abstract
This article explores the concept of ‘love jihad’ and the love jihad discourse in a Scandinavian setting, with a particular emphasis on contemporary works of art and popular culture in Norway. Arguing that ‘love jihad’ may be understood as part of a larger cluster of meaning related to fear of love across religious and cultural boundaries, and of losing ‘our women’ to ‘foreign men’, the article demonstrates that the love-jihad discourse and its related tropes exist in the Norwegian public sphere. It is directly articulated in far-right blogs and Facebook groups and indirectly present in the works of art and popular culture that this article explores. Indeed, read intertextually and in light of recent research in sociology and media studies about Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric on the Internet, works such as Disgraced, Heisann Montebello, SAS plus/SAS pussy, and Norskish demonstrate—through challenging, mocking or discussing the love-jihad discourse—that ‘love jihad’ has echoes in contemporary Norway.
Highlights
What does ‘love jihad’, a concept coming from India, have to do with Scandinavian, or more Norwegian social and cultural realities? In line with the editors of this special issue,‘Love Jihad’: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory
I further argue that love jihad is part of a larger cluster of meaning related to fear of love across religious and cultural boundaries, and of losing ‘our women’ to men of another group
My main focus will be on how the love-jihad discourse and related tropes come to the fore in contemporary Scandinavian works of art and popular culture
Summary
What does ‘love jihad’, a concept coming from India, have to do with Scandinavian, or more Norwegian social and cultural realities? In line with the editors of this special issue,‘Love Jihad’: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory. The theatre play, music videos, and TV-series that I refer to in this article influenced the Norwegian public sphere between 2015 and 2021 They address the issue of Islam in Europe or America, discuss questions of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, and put on stage or explore different aspects of interfaith love, directly or indirectly evoking prejudices close to those incarnated in the love-jihad discourse. The three works I explore testify to a Norwegian public sphere where questions of religion, and especially of Islam, are increasingly raised within art and popular culture. Through close readings of selected works of art and popular culture, I identify recurrent tropes: for example, the blonde woman, the violent Muslim male, and the oppressed Muslim woman; tropes that are characteristic of the anti-Islam discourse found on far-right social media platforms, as studied by the Norwegian sociologist Katrine. This review serves to contextualize my reading of the selected works of art
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