The doctrine of religious security as a justification for the protection and restriction of religious freedom. Two sides of the same coin

Abstract

The paper analyzes the doctrine of religious security among other things it is noted the this doctrine was not formally consolidated in strategic state documents, but in practice that results in an expansive interpretation of religious security based on the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation. The paper also shows how the argument about religious security can be used both in favor of protecting such security and religious freedom, and as a goal of introducing serious restrictions on rights and freedoms. Based on the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that it is unacceptable to use an abstract formally indefinite category of religious security as one of the criteria for the proportionality of restrictive measures.
The article focuses on the reasons of why the only way found by the state is to declare the entire religious sphere potentially dangerous as well as it analyzes current legislation that aims to protect state, society, religious organization and citizens, but often leads to suppressing non-traditional religious associations under the guise of protecting religious security.