ISLAMIC PROSELYTISM IN THE MIRROR. BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND SECURITY RISKS

Religious proselytism, characterized by the policy of converting new followers in order to practice religious beliefs, is a subject that generates confusion in terms of ensuring the balance between respecting religious freedoms and preventing national security risks. Starting from the distinction between improper religious proselytism that uses undemocratic methods to attract new followers and conventional religious proselytism that falls within the sphere of religious freedom, we believe that a mirror analysis of the two types of proselytism can lead to highlighting key aspects that exceed the manifestation of religious freedom, and in some cases, it can lead to the initiation of the process of Islamic radicalization. The premise of the article is that the relationship between improper Islamic religious proselytism and the process of Islamic radicalization is a whole-to-part relationship: the early signs that indicate the advanced stage of Islamic radicalization in the cases pronounced by Romanian court decisions demonstrate that improper Islamic proselytism accompanies the process of violent radicalization. As a methodology, the method of combining two theories is applied: the theory of conversion and radicalization as a sub-type of radicalization to highlight the relationship between conventional proselytism and the process of religious conversion on the one hand, and on the other hand, the relationship between improper proselytism and violent Islamic radicalization. The methodological tool used is the analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in which there were identified cases of proselytism and of the decisions of the national courts in Romania, through which the radicalized immigrants were expelled.