Browsing by study line "Theology Track"

This case study analyzes post-conflict intervention and internal displacement from a broader Iraq context. The research is conducted through case studies, utilizing content analysis of five publicly available ongoing development plans. The plans are investigated with content analysis to find out 1) how internal displacement is taken into consideration within the context of post-conflict reconstruction, 2) how post-conflict intervention and internal displacement are framed, and 3) how durable the solutions to displacement are. This study aims to get an insight into how development is planned and where the emphasis lies in the post-conflict reconstruction context of Iraq. The theoretical framework of this study builds on Yosef Jabareen's framework on post-conflict reconstruction intervention and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee's (IASC) framework on durable solutions for the internally displaced. By combining these frameworks, the study analyzes the concepts interconnectedly, providing a deeper understanding of Iraq in a specific time and context. The analysis reveals that the documents consider the issue of internal displacement, with sustainable development forming the basis for planning. However, the approach and emphasis on these topics vary across the plans, where most attention is put on priorities and challenges to reconstruction. Moreover, external intervention, inclusion, and cooperation are said to be needed to achieve durable solutions. The government of Iraq is the leading actor in development, so much emphasis is put on government action and change. It is recommended that the government should increase implementation efforts and specify how the development goals and targets are to be achieved because the current development plans only offer guidelines for future development. The plans are structured within the durable solutions framework for migration. However, this does not necessarily align with the reality.

The popularity of populism, especially right-wing populism, has been one of the most central global political trends of the 21st century. One central aspect of right-wing populism is its close relationship to Christianity and the product of this collaboration is religious populism. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze whether this closeness is true in Finnish political context. I have examined whether the populist and religious populist rhetoric was used in three proceedings of the commonly called trans-law in the Finnish Parliament between 2022 and 2023. According to my research, political speech combines the three core features of the populist style: built-in demagogy, performance of threats and bad manners (Moffitt 2016) and uses religion as a framing device counts as religious populism. The amount of populist rhetoric in my data was significant. According to the data analysis several representatives use a lot of different populist style rhetorical means and religious populism in their political speech. Demagogy appeared both as traditional dichotomy between the people and the elite as well as between liberal and conservative representatives. The bad manners appeared mostly as colorful and informal self-expression and within the use of false information. The performance of various crises, threats and collapses was appearing primarily as a concern about the fundamental collapse of the values of the Finnish welfare state. As a conclusion it can be said that the use of religious populist style in Finland follows largely the same legalities than abroad. All of these enable religion and its symbolism and tradition to be utilized in different ways. This research backs up the consensus about religious populism being a global phenomenon and somehow similar regardless of the local context. According to the results of my analysis, in Finland, religion was used in many ways as a rhetorical device as part of political speech.

Finnish society is increasingly pluralistic regarding religion, and especially Muslims are rapidly growing in numbers. The population structure of Muslims in Finland is increasingly young, yet young Muslims’ experiences are currently under-studied. Muslims have been present in Finland since the early 19th century, along with other ethnic and religious minorities. Still, ever since then, Finland has been viewed as culturally homogeneous. This is connected to the view of Lutheranism as an intrinsic part of the Finnish national identity. This has led to an exclusion of people who do not belong to the category of Finnishness, and thus resulted in anti-Muslim racism. The objective of this master’s thesis is three-fold. The first aim is to contribute to the currently scarce research on social media representations of Islam and Muslims. Secondly, the existing media research on Islam and Muslims is heavily concentrated on media produced by non-Muslims, rather than media produced by Muslims themselves. Especially, research on media representations produced by young Finnish Muslims themselves are next to none. Thirdly, previous research shows that young Muslims in Europe are mostly studied in relation to issues of extremism, radicalization and violence. The manifolded nature of Muslim identities is not considered enough in the academia, and thus it is important to adopt an intersectional research approach that considers Muslims’ different identity categories, such as religion, ethnicity and age. This is done through qualitatively examining young Finnish Muslims in a previously unstudied social media environment: podcasts. The thesis answers two research questions: 1. ‘How do young Muslims negotiate their identities, especially in relation to Finnishness?’ and 2. ‘How are experiences of racism discussed in podcasts produced by young Muslims in Finland?’ The data of the thesis consists of four episodes from three different podcasts produced by young Finnish Muslims, ‘Ramadan Radio: Limitless Talks’, ‘Kahden kulttuurin väkeä’ and ‘Kh4nVision Podcast’. The thesis adopts a social constructionist approach to studying identity, based on the assumption that knowledge is produced in interaction with others. The chosen analytical methodology is critical discourse analysis (CDA). Six dominant discourses emerged from the data in the analysis: 1) intersectional identities as problematic; 2) code-switching between different identities; 3) Islam as an identity marker; 4) agency in change; 5) assigning responsibility of racism to the structures; and 6) internalized racism. The results reflect a complicated reality of being a young Muslim in Finland. In the podcasts, young Muslims negotiate their intersectional identities in relation to Finnishness from a problem-based perspective. Experiences of racism are manifested in the podcasts in numerous ways, from code-switching to reproducing racist language. The results of the study indicate that young Finnish Muslims’ identity is socially constructed and religious and ethnic identities are interconnected. The results of the thesis also show that discourse of identities is tightly connected to the context of production and the assumed audience of the content. The results support previous research findings, demonstrating that Muslims choose to emphasize different parts of their identity in contexts where Islam is not at center stage.