Dealing with Islamism: Religion and democracy in Norway and Sweden

This paper summarizes a new research project, that will hopefully start up later this year or early next year (the scale of the project will depend on funding). This paper is a simplified and shortened version of the proposal, which hopefully can be of some interest to readers at ECPR. I provide the background for the project, and outline what we aim to do. The main question in the project is as follows: How should democracies deal with organizations that may have links to Islamist organizations? It does so by zooming in on Norway and Sweden. The policies and discourses relating to movements who are accused of being Islamist differ a lot between these two countries. Swedish discourse and policy have over time become more restrictive and critical than in Norway. We will also look at the impact these different policies and discourses have had on the organizations who are alleged to be Islamist, and how such organizations approach contested political issues. Our hypothesis is that Islamist-linked actors in Norway have developed in a more liberal direction than the Islamist-linked actors in Sweden, in line with the inclusion-moderation thesis.