Means of discrimination or HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

• Discrimination by active involvement

If a state authority or private or juristic body takes measures to penalize a person because of religion or belief, it is considered discrimination. If an employer refuses to give a job to a candidate simply because the applicant is presumably a Jehovah ’s Witness, then the employer is committing a discriminatory act (regardless of whether or not the candidate is actually a Jehovah ’s Witnesses).

• Discrimination by inactivity / passive involvement

State and other bodies can be involved in discrimination via passivity. If for example a state body does not intervene where necessary to protect the rights and freedoms of specific people because these people worship a minor religion, their inactivity is discriminatory.

Freedom of religion counts among the most basic of constitutional rights. State authorities are obliged to provide equal access to this right to all residents and to prevent others from violating it. In the case where a peaceful religious service is attacked or a cemetery is desecrated by extremists and state authorities take no adequate action to ensure that such attacks will not continue, we can discuss the violation of religious freedom.

However, if state authorities take action only while protecting assemblies, memorial places or services of selected churches, we can talk about discrimination of these other churches through inactivity. The state then does not fulfill its obligations towards particular groups of people, impeding them to practice their rights.

It is also considered discrimination through inactivity in school institutions if they do not act against bullying practices amongst schoolmates or when an employer does not specify vacation-taking for a Jewish employee even though all other non-Jewish employees at the workplace were so informed.

• Accompanying phenomena: intolerance, extremism, fundamentalism

Discrimination based on religion or belief is often associated with religious intolerance sustained among people, implicitly supported or even induced by state power. Intolerance embodies attitudes that openly refuse the strange or unknown, in this case outer displays of other religions, for instance:
• appearance (Muslim beard, Buddhist shaved head)
• outfit (shrouded body and hair of Muslim women)
• behavior, customs (Jewish Sabbath)
• religious rituals, obscure for people on the outside, etc.

This refusal can present extremism, thus resorting oneself to violent expression of hostility towards other religions (ceremony cancellations, aggression against spiritual leaders, desecration of cemeteries, damaging temples or direct assaults on particular religion followers, etc) An example of hatred and intolerance is the skinhead movement noticeable in many European countries, including Slovakia.

On the contrary, some religious groups tend to respond to this refusal by diverting towards fundamentalism, gaining a radical view of their own religion which is usually accompanied by elements of violence against all “unfaithful”. Much has been recently said about so-called Islamic fundamentalism, however there is a vast range of other examples such as Catholic fundamentalism in Europe, demonstrated by the radical wing of the Irish Republican Army, Zionist fundamentalism in Israel, etc.

• Discrimination and sect activities

The word “sect” in Slovakia is usually understood as a religious group founded on fanatic worship, or even directly based on the fraud of its founder, that significantly interferes with the moral development of youth, threaten human lives, health or possession by its ideology and break the law.

For a longer time now, the question arises in public discussion on how the state can protect its citizens from the malignant influence of sects. All negative sect activities can be punished by existing law, therefore there is no need to introduce another law in this case. It is enough to secure that the state authorities will efficiently assert their powers. The best prevention against the manipulation of people by those intent on deception is public education and informing people on how to protect themselves on their own from harmful influences.