Author(s)

Nikolaos Dimitriadis^1*, Catia Cruz², Ioanara Silva², José Paulo Oliveira², Eliza Patouris³

¹Kentro Oikoumenikon Ierapostolikon kai Perivallontikon Meleton Mitropolos, Thessaloniki, Greece.
²Lusofona University, Lisbon, Portugal.
³Research and Education in Social Empowerment and Transformation, Limassol, Cyprus.

Religion is a constant and integral part of humankind. One of the core principles of religious freedom is free and safe access to places of worship. This right cannot be guaranteed in all countries, as shown by recent events, such as violent acts and terrorist attacks that seek their main motivations in religion. This paper examines religious fundamentalism from a conceptual and theoretical standpoint. The typological elements that appear in many religious traditions are presented and explained with the scope of identifying common characteristics across all types of religious fundamentalism. The paper provides an overview of the need for consolidated efforts to combat religious fundamentalism present in most European countries at the moment, and protect places of worship, guaranteeing the free exercise of the essential right of religious freedom. In this light we present PROSECUW (an EU-funded project under the Internal Security Fund-Police programme) which aims to enhance the protection and security in places of worship through training of relevant professionals and knowledge exchange of good practices among EU stakeholders.

EU, Good Practice, Places of Worship, Protection and Security, Religion

Dimitriadis, N. , Cruz, C. , Silva, I. , Oliveira, J. and Patouris, E. (2023) The Impact of Religious Fundamentalism on Places of Worship. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 11, 261-270. doi: 10.4236/jss.2023.114019.