Muslimsk skola, svenska villkor. Konflikt, identitet & förhandling

The study is about a conflict concerning a Muslim Independent School in Jönköping. Based on fieldwork carried out on the Muslim Independent School and one of the local authority´s comprehensive schools – which included fifteen interviews and a comprehensive collection of newspaper articles and reports – I have problemised the relationship between the different groups in the local community and who had the preferential right of intepretation with regard to school, upbringing and values. Muslim parents were regarded by the local community as being incapable of taking responsibility for their own affairs. They were described as economically weak, uneducated, socially segregated and irresponsible. This needs to be understood from the perspective of traditional Swedish welfarepolicy, where the state is considered to be better able to judge what is good for a family with regard to upbringing and education. In addition to the social aspects, different notions of cultural differences led to the families being regarded as tied to tradition and underdeveloped in comparison to the modern Swedish lifestyle. This way of placing contemporary, but different values and behaviour into a time scale ranging from the past and traditional to the present and modern is captured in the study by the concept of chronopolitics. At the same time, arguing the significance of culture and origin became an effective political tool. A result of the argument about diversity was that the Muslim parents accepted a group ranking which placed them at the bottom. Similarly, the liberal vision of the comprehensive school to treat all people as equals was found to have limitations. In order to be regarded as an equal, a person must both recognise and act in accordance with the belief of a liberated self. By using a number of concrete examples, the study shows that it isn´t possible to liberate yourself from knowledge and notions about different people. An analysis of how different people judge and negotiate a particular conflict of values based on their own terms is politically relevant, because every conflict is unique and leads to the awareness that there are many different perspectives as to how public life could be organised.