This paper deals with how Islam, Muslims and The Middle East are depicted in Swedish public policy debates between 1975-2010. The paper argues that the Swedish state and the political parties through various strategies have tried to administer, channel and construct an acceptable version of Islam that incorporates moderate values, is secularized and liberal. At the same time the image of the good Muslim versus the bad Muslim has been politically constructed to comply with Swedish values and political culture. The political construction of Islam and Muslims in the Swedish context furthermore has had a strong influence on Swedish policies towards the Middle East and opinions about the prospect of democratisation in the region as well as gender equality. The paper draws on empirical material which includes major government documents, official government inquiries, parliamentary debates, bills, committee work and proposals for parliamentary resolutions. The analysis draws upon a combination of discourse theory, especially theories on governmentality and Postcolonial theory concerning representation, stereotypes, orientalism and imitation. The paper will demonstrate the shifts that have occurred in the discourses concerning Islam, Muslims and the Middle East in public policy debates. In the initial two periods of 1975-1980 and 1980-1990 Islam and Muslims were mostly related to questions concerning practical issues like education and religious slaughter. During the 1990s the shift included a focus on independent Islamic schools and a more explicit focus on perceived problems related to Islam and Muslim immigration in Swedish society. During the period between 2001-2010 there was another shift that included focus on questions regarding Islamism, islamophobia, anti-Semitism among Muslims and gender inequalities in the Middle East. The paper identifies four different discourses that compete to define and explain Islam, Muslims and the Middle East within the Swedish public policy debates. The first is a discourse on integration; the second concerns equality; the third focuses on security; and the fourth is a discourse on homogenization. This illustrates how the political construction of Islam and Muslims has changed over time from dealing with practical issues and social inclusion to dealing with which values that are considered to be unacceptable and therefore possible to exclude from the Swedish society and which values concerning democracy and gender equality that are perceived as possible to achieve in the Middle East.