International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Against the backdrop of the changing role of religion in geopolitical relations, and in connections with the identified global threats to humankind (such as terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking, etc.), a considerable number of theorists and ideologues focused on the problem of security are relating these threats to the growing activeness of religious minorities in various parts of the world, and specifically of supporters of the extreme, fundamentalist version of Islam. Speaking of security, we must inevitably think of fears. The latter are about personal and public safety or the anxiety that society may stop functioning. Widespread fears have a corrosive, long-term effect on social cohesion and stability. The social exclusion of ever-greater groups of people spreads to more and more spheres, such as those of the economy, the market, politics, education, healthcare, etc. The increasing marginalization of groups of people, and the inability of institutions to resolve the problem, result in the search for a scapegoat – the role of such may fall upon the political elites, ethnic minorities, migrants. Identifying an enemy is a precondition of social conflict. We are increasingly afraid of one another as we have become accustomed to believing that our worlds are so different that there meeting would bring about the end of at least one of them. Labeling, supported by passionate qualifications, has proved to be a universal way of dealing with the unfamiliar. Woe to him who cannot define himself and continues naively to believe we can live together without the aid of stereotypes. The oldest and strongest human emotion is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is that of the unknown. Some of the images related to contemporary Islam are formed not within the House of Islam, but where the religious community is obliged to coexist with others. The change of representations of the so-called European Islam can be identified in Bulgarian reality as well. The willingness to adopt and follow certain principles of conduct typical for the arguments of fundamentalism grows in direct proportion with the growing variety of the immediate social environments of Muslims. In fact, the spaces of fundamentalist interpretation of the religious canon are formed not within the traditional Muslim communities but at the points of their active contacts with other cultural and religious models.

The analysis is focused on nationalism, populism, hate speech, multiculturalism. The processes designated as globalization are mobilizing a resistance that increasingly manifests itself as an effort to preserve the identity of various ethnic cultural and religious traditions. Populist extremism is nourished by what it describes as the antagonism between the organic, “pure”, nation and the nation’s enemies, whether these be the Jews, the Muslims, the ethnic minorities and/or the “corrupt elite”. Populism is a distorted form of democracy that promises to fulfill the loftiest ideals of democracy (“Let the people decide!”). In other words, the threat comes from within, because the politicians that represent that threat speak the language of democratic values.
Hate speech is an utterance that denigrates or stigmatizes a person or a number of people on the basis of their affiliation to a group that usually, but not always, has certain unchanging characteristics, for instance, an ethnic or religious group. The fundamental problem here is the lack of understanding that the responsibility for the actions of one person may not be shifted to all people having some trait in common with the perpetrator. To distinguish between the individual and his group is a fundamental principle of democracy.
The discussion on multiculturalism cautions against the attempts to idealize multiculturalism: the philosophy and reality of multiculturalism do not always overlap. Most European states are inclined to think of multiculturalism mostly as a framework for the coexistence of different cultures rather than as a transnational mechanism for the integration of new settlers within a dominant culture. According to the critics of multiculturalism, Europe has allowed excessive immigration without requiring sufficient integration, an inappropriate course that has resulted in the erosion of social cohesion, the undermining of national identities and the decrease of social trust. The defendants of multiculturalism, for their part, respond that the problem lies not in excessive diversity but in excessive racism. A core set of shared basic values and rules (the Constitution, the laws, the shared language) guarantees the cohesion of the whole and at the same time sets boundaries to the right to be different and to the principle of equal standing of cultures. The general framework holds clear primacy over the particular cultures. The immigrants may preserve and maintain only that part of their cultures that is not in contradiction with the mandatory shared whole (“selective preservation of culture”).

Values are the principle of human existence. They are its proto-principle. Human life runs its course within a world of values, is guided and made meaningful by values. Political action, as a kind of social action, is guided by meaning and – directly or indirectly – by values. The cardinal function of values is to legitimate the social and political (individual and/or group) actions. The devaluation of values leads to a crisis of society, the only solution to which is a revaluation of values. And because – not being subject to natural causality – values are a matter of choice, when they are imposed and coercively required of people, they cannot result in the good, and their devaluation becomes inevitable. Devalued values break down the immune system of a person, a group, a society. The disregard for politics as a value is a symptom of a severely ailing society. Overall, researches on values have revealed a tendency to moral degradation and a shortage of social and political values. Sociologists explain this negative trend with reference to the preceding period that had abruptly placed whole generations of people socialized in one type of society – the Socialist one – into a new reality that required a radical elimination of the conflict areas in their now compromised past socialization. A clarification of the interconnection between attitudes and values such as justice, family, work, politics, etc., gives answers to the question as to how far these values are a resource for meaningful construction and/or consolidation of community ties. The extent to which values are accepted by the community as reference points for personal and social realization depends on the interiorization of supra-individual norms and values. Only a person who has interiorized these norms and values – not as imposed coercively from outside but as his/her own – may simultaneously live in society and be “free” of society. Individualization is the basic characteristic of a healthy society. The individualization in question must not consist of individualism, atomization, and/or highlighting the Self, but should involve a collective and normative style of life. In that case, it may alleviate the contrast between desired values that underlie the actual conduct of people, and the desirable values that are related to the normative requirements of society.