The Typology of Religious Extremism
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Date
2018
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Abstract
The issue of religious extremism is typically addressed in the international literature from the
perspective of various forms of religious fanaticism1 and terrorism,2 and based on the
“traditional” problems related to religious sects. However, few works have gone beyond the
definition of extremism and its main forms of practical implementation to provide a
sophisticated system of criteria and offer an exhaustive typology.
This being so, the aim of the present work is to fill in this gap, adopting a three-element
structure to set up a typology that groups the various instances of extreme religious activity.
This study does this by presenting the realities of a particular state (Hungary) and giving
examples of each type of extremist activity where possible – fortunately, due to the complete
absence of certain types of violent, religiously motivated phenomena, we could not find any
Hungarian examples for some extremist activities. These examples must, of course, be
incorporated into the Hungarian context, and therefore this paper also outlines the main
contours of Hungarian regulations on religious affairs, the developments that have taken place
in recent decades, and the causes behind any major changes.
This work primarily applies the approaches and methods of legal studies and sociology, but
also makes use of the views and findings of political science and other fields, and the results of
this paper can thereby be considered to have come from a consciously complex approach.