In this article, I use the experience of a Czech doctoral student to discuss why religion education in Sweden can be understood as both deeply Lutheran and at the same time neutral and objective. In doing this, I look at the present syllabus in religion education, point to some of the changes that have been made in relation to the previous syllabus, and highlight some of the controversies that arose when it was written in 2010. I also put Swedish religion education and Swedish educational system in a historical context, pointing to its relation to liberal theology and cultural Protestantism. In addition, I present how teacher education is organized for religion education teachers and how the academic Study of Religions has been an important part of this during recent decades. At the end of the article I reflect upon the protestant taste of Sweden’s ‘non-denominational and neutral’ religion education.

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This article focuses on the reported experiences of Muslim students that regularly shift between Muslim 'supplementary education' (including its traditional confessional focus on learning to read Arabic and then memorise and recite the Qur'an) and mainstream school education (including its 'inclusive' form of religious education'). The aim has been to better comprehend how these students make sense of this dual educational experience while negotiating the knowledge, skills, and values that are taught to them by two often seemingly disparate institutions. A further aim is to place our findings within the growing field of intercultural education. Though both types of education are often thought to be distinct and oppositionalthe former as nonconfessional and 'modern', the latter as confessional and 'outmoded'both English and Swedish students were able to identify a degree of symbiosis between the two, particularly in relation to the process of memorisation. Thus, it became increasingly clear to the researchers that Muslim student reflection on their participation in both traditions of education had an intercultural dimension in the sense of encouraging dialogue and discussion across educational cultures prompting new knowledge and understanding. This article lays out some of the evidence for this conclusion.

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Negative attitudes toward dogs are common in Muslim societies. Thus, in studying both past and present Muslim writings on dogs, a contradictory picture emerges, indicating that Muslim attitudes toward dogs have had their ambiguities. At times the dog has been presented as the lowest, filthiest, and vilest of creatures, and at times the dog appears as a perfect role model, exemplifying qualities like loyalty, devotion, and selfsacrifice. There are signs that attitudes toward dogs are changing in some Muslim soci eties. One such sign is that an increasing number of people in Muslim countries are now keeping dogs as companion animals. The following research will be used to highlight ambiguities as well as changes in order to not only better understand the position of the dog within Islam, but also to provide a very concrete example of how interpretations of religions are not isolated or single but are dependent on context. Negative attitudes toward dogs are common in Muslim societies, and manyMuslims consider the dog to be an unclean animal. It is said, for example, that the prayers of Muslims will be invalidated if a dog wanders by a praying per son; and the Swedish media has occasionally run stories about Muslim taxi drivers who refused to transport dogs in their vehicles. In 2002 Iran imposed a ban on public dog walking (Foltz, 2006, p. 132); and, according to the major Islamic schools of law, when a dog has eaten from a bowl it must be washed at least seven times to be fit for human usage (Bakhtiar, 1996, p. 13).

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