Encountering religious diversity : multilevel governance of Islamic education in Finland and Ireland

Recent decades have witnessed a change in European governments’ policies from benign neglect to active management of religious diversity, where Islam is often seen as the most challenging for the European social order. However, the ways that this “management” is justified and undertaken varies from country to country and depends on the issues at hand. This paper will take up the issue of Islamic education in Finland and Ireland where it is incorporated into the public school system and where the state has taken an active role in order to control Islam in the field of education. The main argument of this article is that the “management” of Islamic education in both of the above-mentioned countries is ridden with contradictions arising from the difficulty to balance between an emphasis on particular national traditions, on the one hand, and public policies concerning religious diversity, on the other hand. Theoretically, the article will employ the perspective of multilevel governance which helps to widen the perspective from the state as a primary explanatory to different agents of the civil society in encountering religious diversity.Peer reviewe

Experimental study of timber-to-timber composite beam using welded-through wood dowels

This paper presents exploratory research related to novel full-scale multi-layered timber beams with composite action achieved with welded-through wood dowels. Different multi-layer beam designs, where the timber layers were interconnected with welded wood dowels providing interlayer shear resistance, were tested in bending with different dowel densities. The main originality of this study is the achievement of dowel welds through greater depths of sections than has previously proved possible. The practical difficulties encountered in constructing deeper multi-layer beams, and the successful solutions arrived at, are discussed. The significance of the research reported is the demonstrated ability to produce multilayered timber sections which are structurally efficient and do not require non timber based joining agents such as nails or adhesive.Deposited by bulk impor