Religiously Inspired Terrorism in the European Union Countries

One of the main threats to the security of the European Union countries is the activity of radical Muslim circles, sympathizing with or inspired by Al Qaeda and the so-called “Islamic State”. The reasons for this state should be sought in the deepening social and economic divisions and inequalities in the European Union. These factors, in many cases, initiate the process of religious radicalization, leading to fundamentalism and extremism, and in extreme cases, even to violence and terrorism. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the phenomenon of religiously inspired terrorism on the level of security in European Union countries. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, a mixed research method was used during research, consisting of a desk review of primary sources, qualitative content analysis, comparative method and extrapolation method. The original contribution of this work is the determination of the characteristics of the contemporary jihadist terrorism threat and presenting possible directions of the evolution of terrorist threats in European Union countries, which seems to be particularly important in the context of creating effective long-term EU counter-terrorism policy.