As is also the case in other parts of the world, Salafi interpretations of Islam appear to be on the rise in Sweden, especially among young people turning to Islam. One of the most active and visible missionising Salafi organisations in Sweden is called islam.nu. It is based in Stockholm but has a national outreach programme and a very active online presence. This article focuses on islam.nu and a dawa campaign called #karavanen (the Caravan) and how it was advertised and developed on the social media platform Instagram from March 2018 to March 2020. By using market and consumer value theories to analyse the Instagram content related to the #karavanen, the article is an explorative attempt to approach contemporary Salafi missionising and growth from a new perspective.
The article analyses the background of a popular conception of Sufism as equivalent to 'Islamic esotericism' by tracing two different but sometimes confluent currents: reifications of Sufism within Western romanticist and modern environments, and the approach to it in Islamic reformist movements. A further aim is to nuance and problematize such understandings, making use of examples from both historical and contemporary Sufism. Finally, the article briefly discusses possible pros and cons related to the interbreeding of Islamic Studies and the academic studies of Western esotericism.
This article focuses on the history and establishment of the first Muslim congregation and organisationin Sweden, Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige för Religion och Kultur (Turk-Islamic Associationfor Religion and Culture), which was founded in the late 1940s by a small group of immigrants andrefugees of Tatar and Turkish origin. The community has been the object of earlier research (seeSvanberg & Westerlund 1999; Ståhlberg & Svanberg 2016; Sorgenfrei 2018) but the following isa first attempt to describe the historical background of the Tatars in Sweden through systematicarchival work. The article thus aims at being also an orientation to the archival and private sourcesof the group and their organization and to point out some topics of interest for further research.
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