Images of Muslims and Islam in Swedish Christian and secular news discourse

This article is a descriptive comparative quantitative content analysis of the construction of Islam and Muslims in 2006-2007 in four Swedish publications - the liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter representing mainstream media, the Evangelical newspaper Dagen, the fundamentalist newspaper Varlden idag representing the Christian right, and the journal SD-Kuriren, the official organ of the Sweden Democrats, a neo-nationalist party. The aim is to see where a chasm between those media that accept the presence of Muslims and Islam in Sweden, and those that do not, occurs. The results put the liberal Dagens Nyheter and the Evangelical Dagen on one side of the divide and the fundamentalist Varlden idag and the neo-nationalist SD-Kuriren on the other. Varlden idag and SD-Kuriren tend to describe Muslims and Islam as threatening, and '-our' elite as retreating. In these two media, Muslims are consistently described as aggressive and the cause of social and political problems. Finally, in both media, Muslims are related to negative behavior; good Muslim behavior is constantly disregarded, while bad behavior is assumed to reflect their true character. Varlden idag also claims that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Liberal Dagens Nyheter and Evangelical Dagen avoid describing Muslims and Islam as a threat and more often seek constructive solutions to different problems. Dagens Nyheter moreover describes conflicts between Muslim and Christian actors in political, not religious, terms. Dagen also sees Muslims and Christians alike as victims of the forces of secularization.