Abstract
For many years, and especially since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11th, public discussion has focused concern on religious extremism. Manifestation of extremism can be bigotry and intolerance, excessiveness, or transgression of defined limits by a particular group of people claiming allegiance to their religion. Extremism can be inter-religious (i.e., directed against different religious communities) or intra-religious (within the same religion). As Abdelfattah Amor, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance says, "no religion is free from extremism", which means extremism, can be found in Islam, Christianity or Judaism, even though we tend to stigmatize Islamic extremism much more. To what extent can we assert that there is a rise of religious extremism today? How can we explain this outbreak?
