Muslims by Ascription: On Post-Lutheran Secularity and Muslim Immigrants

David Thurfjell,Erika Willander

doi:10.1163/15685276-12341626

Abstract

Abstract This article empirically explores the interplay between the secular, post-Lutheran majority culture and Muslim immigrants in Sweden. It presents the ambiguous role of religion in the country’s mainstream discourse, the othering of religion that is characteristic to this, and the expectations of Muslims to be strongly religious that follows as its consequence. Four results of a web-panel survey with Swedes of Muslim and Christian family background are then presented: (1) Both groups largely distance themselves from their own religious heritage – the Muslims do this in a more definite way; (2) the Muslim respondents have more secular values and identities than the Christians; (3) contrary expectations, Christian respondents show more affinity to their religious heritage than the Muslims do to theirs; and (4) the fusion between the groups is prominent. The article concludes that equating religious family heritage with religious identity is precipitous in the case of Swedish Muslims.

Highlights

Starting from a presentation of the ambiguous role religion plays in the post-Lutheran majority discourse and the expectations that this discourse places on Muslim immigrants, the article moves on to address the empirical questions of how important religion is in the lives of Swedish Muslims and to what extent their stance on
We suggest that looking at some prominent features of the specific religious tradition that has dominated this country over the last couple of centuries, namely that of state-church Lutheranism, will help explain the situation
Our results suggest that Swedes with a Christian family background affirm certain aspects of that background

Summary

Introduction

A mediumlevel scenario – which is the most probable – predicts 21 percent Muslims in the Swedish population of 2050, which would be the top score of all the 30 European countries included in the study (Pew 2017a) This demographic development obviously entails a major change in the religious situation of Sweden. This article is an attempt at an empirically based analysis of the interplay between Sweden’s two biggest religious traditions: the nation-building Lutheranism of the former state church and the heterogenous Islam of immigrants and their children. It results in a call for the use of empirically based analytical categories when approaching the challenging domain of today’s secularity and multireligiosity in Sweden. The year 2000 marks the official divorce between church and state in Sweden and can be seen as a major change in a long process of legal secularization (Ekström 2003)

Methods

Results

Conclusion