PROTECTING WITHOUT SILENCING: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND THE PREVENTION OF EXTREMISM IN PLACES OF WORSHIP
Places of worship thrive on openness. Churches, mosques, synagogues and other religious institutions are not merely places of prayer. They are spaces where people come together, build community, exchange ideas and practise their faith openly. This accessibility is part of what makes them valuable to society. At the same time, it can also make religious communities and their places of worship particularly vulnerable.
That vulnerability does not begin at the front door. Long before hostility turns into a physical attack, religious communities may already have become the target of hate speech, conspiracy theories, disinformation or extremist narratives. In the digital sphere in particular, such narratives can spread rapidly, reinforce existing prejudices and shape how entire communities are perceived.
This creates a difficult challenge for extremism prevention. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, and democratic societies must protect space for controversial, provocative and even deeply uncomfortable views. At the same time, speech can contribute to harm long before it crosses the threshold into an explicit threat or direct incitement to violence. Repeated narratives can normalise hostility, amplify existing stereotypes and, in some cases, contribute to an environment in which religious communities or their places of worship become targets.
The central question, therefore, is not simply where free speech ends and illegal speech begins. It is how to recognise when expression starts to reinforce extremist narratives or increase risks for religious communities and how to respond without undermining the very freedoms and openness that places of worship depend on.
WHEN DOES LANGUAGE BECOME A SECURITY ISSUE?
Freedom of expression is one of the foundations of democratic societies. Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights protects the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas. At the same time, Article 10 protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the right to practise religion individually or collectively, in public or in private. These rights therefore have to be considered together: protecting open debate must go hand in hand with protecting people’s ability to live and practise their faith freely. This also means that controversial or offensive speech cannot automatically be treated as a security threat. Democratic societies need space for sharp political disagreement, criticism of religion and debate about religious institutions and practices. Criticising a religion is not the same as expressing hostility towards people because of their religious identity.
At the same time, controversial speech, hate speech and extremist communication are not identical categories. The Council of Europe defines hate speech as forms of expression that incite, promote, spread or justify hatred, violence or discrimination against individuals or groups, including on the grounds of religion. It also stresses that responses to hate speech must remain proportionate and embedded in a human rights framework.
The difficult cases, however, often lie in the grey area between lawful expression and direct incitement. Speech does not need to amount to an explicit threat in order to have harmful effects. Repeated claims that portray a religious group as dangerous, disloyal or fundamentally incompatible with society can reinforce stereotypes and normalise hostility, even where individual statements remain legally protected. The same applies to misleading or decontextualised information that is repeatedly amplified, reframed or combined with existing extremist narratives.
This is particularly relevant in the digital sphere, where content can circulate rapidly and reach very different audiences. A statement that appears provocative but isolated in one context can acquire a different meaning when it is embedded in a wider narrative of threat, betrayal or collective blame. Over time, such narratives can shape perceptions of entire communities and contribute to an environment in which hostility becomes more socially acceptable.
For extremism prevention, the challenge is therefore not simply to identify illegal content. It is also to understand when speech begins to reinforce patterns of exclusion, fear and mobilisation that may increase risks for religious communities and their places of worship.
WHEN ONLINE NARRATIVES CREATE REAL-WORLD HARM
The consequences of hostile or extremist narratives are not limited to cases in which online content directly leads to an attack. Harm can begin much earlier. Repeated hostility, threats and dehumanising narratives can make people feel unsafe, discourage them from expressing their religious identity openly or even lead them to avoid religious spaces altogether.
This is already visible in the experiences of religious communities across Europe. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, 76 % of Jewish respondents hide their Jewish identity at least occasionally, while 34 % avoid Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe there. Online antisemitism also affects participation: some respondents avoid posting content that would identify them as Jewish or withdraw from online discussions. Muslims in Europe also continue to face a high level of discrimination and harassment. According to the FRA, 27 % of respondents reported experiencing racist harassment within the five years prior to the survey. In other cases, hostile narratives can become part of a wider process of mobilisation/radicalization. The riots that followed the fatal knife attack in Southport in July 2024 illustrate how quickly this can happen. Shortly after the attack, false claims circulated online portraying the suspect as a Muslim migrant and, in some versions, as an Islamist extremist. In reality, he had been born in the United Kingdom. The misinformation was amplified by far-right actors and fed into existing anti-Muslim and anti-immigration narratives. Violence subsequently spread to several British cities, with mosques and other Muslim institutions among the targets.
The impact extended beyond the immediate attacks. Muslim communities reported heightened fear, some mosques increased security, and at least one temporarily closed in response to threats. In this sense, hostile narratives can restrict openness even without directly producing an act of violence: people change their behaviour, institutions become more cautious and spaces intended to be open and accessible may begin to close themselves off.
A different mechanism can be seen in jihadist mobilisation. In July 2016, two attackers entered the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in France during Mass, took hostages and murdered the priest Jacques Hamel. Investigators later found that the two men had made contact through Telegram only days before the attack and used encrypted online communication while preparing their plans.
Southport and Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray are clearly different cases. The first shows how misinformation and existing prejudices can rapidly mobilise larger groups, including people who may not belong to organised extremist networks. The second illustrates a more ideologically driven process in which digital communication helped connect and mobilise individuals already embedded in a jihadist milieu. Yet both cases demonstrate the same broader point: online narratives and communication can alter the security environment surrounding religious communities and places of worship long before and far beyond a single physical attack.
PROTECTING WITHOUT SILENCING
If harmful narratives can create fear, reinforce prejudice and, in some cases, contribute to mobilisation, the obvious question is: where should prevention begin?
There is no simple dividing line. Some forms of expression clearly cross legal boundaries, for example direct threats or incitement to violence. Others may be offensive, misleading or harmful without reaching the threshold at which restricting them would be justified. The Council of Europe therefore distinguishes between different levels of hate speech and stresses that responses should be proportionate to the severity and context of the expression. Not every harmful statement requires a legal prohibition.
This is precisely what makes prevention difficult. By the time a direct threat appears, a hostile narrative may already have circulated widely. False or misleading information can be repeated, reframed and combined with existing prejudices until it takes on a meaning far beyond the original statement. At the same time, responding too broadly risks treating controversial opinions or legitimate religious and political expression as security threats.
Prevention therefore cannot rely on censorship alone. Timely and credible communication is equally important. The aftermath of the Southport attack offers an important lesson in this regard. Research by the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security comparing the crisis response after Southport with a later security incident in Liverpool found that delays and information gaps can leave space for speculation and harmful narratives to spread. In fast-moving situations, silence is not necessarily neutral: where reliable information is absent, misinformation and extremist actors may fill the gap.
This does not mean that authorities should release unverified information or respond to every rumour. Rather, crisis communication needs to balance accuracy with speed and provide the public with reliable information before speculation becomes dominant. Counter-speech, media literacy and cooperation with civil society and affected communities can complement such communication, particularly where harmful expression remains below the threshold for legal restriction.
The challenge is therefore two-sided. Too little intervention can allow hostility and misinformation to intensify, but too much can undermine freedom of expression and contribute to the securitisation of legitimate debate. Effective extremism prevention must navigate the space between these two risks, responding early enough to reduce harm while remaining proportionate and firmly grounded in fundamental rights.
FROM PROTECTION TO RESILIENCE: THE ROLE OF PARTESS-COM
The challenges outlined above furthermore show why protecting places of worship cannot be reduced to physical security measures or responses to illegal content. Prevention also requires communities to recognise emerging risks, access reliable information, exchange experiences and cooperate with relevant public and civil society actors. Strengthening these capacities can help religious communities respond to hostile narratives and changing security risks without restricting the openness that places of worship depend on.
This broader understanding of prevention is reflected in the EU-financed project PARTESS-COM. Building on the work of PARTES, the project aims to strengthen the security and resilience of religious communities through participatory approaches, capacity building, awareness and cooperation between faith communities, security actors and civil society.
Tools such as the Faith Guardian platform are designed to support this process by combining accessible security resources, incident reporting and practitioner exchange. They can help communities share experiences, recognise emerging risks and respond more effectively to threats, disinformation and extremist narratives.
The aim is not to turn places of worship into closed or heavily securitised spaces. Rather, prevention should enable religious communities to remain open while becoming better prepared to identify and respond to risks. In this sense, resilience means protecting not only buildings and people, but also the openness that allows places of worship to fulfil their religious and social role.
OPENNESS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED
Freedom of expression and extremism prevention should not be treated as opposing goals. Effective prevention requires a careful balance: responding early enough to reduce harm and extremist mobilisation, while avoiding measures that unnecessarily restrict legitimate expression or stigmatise entire communities.
For places of worship, this balance is especially important. Their openness is part of their religious and social function, but it can also make them vulnerable. The aim of prevention should therefore not be to eliminate openness, but to make it more resilient - an approach also pursued by PARTESS-COM: helping religious communities strengthen their resilience while preserving the openness on which their religious and social role depends.
The openness of places of worship is not a security problem to be eliminated. It is an essential part of what needs to be protected.
Olena Butnyk, BA, is a student research assistant at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and works on the EU project PARTESS-COM. She studied Political Science and History at Heidelberg University and Sciences Po Paris and is currently completing a Master’s degree at the University of Vienna. Her research focuses on international security, peace and conflict studies, and democratisation in the post-Soviet region.