Religion, Migration, and the Far-Right: How European Populism Frames Religious Pluralism

Abstract

This article examines how populist radical right parties (PRR) in three contrasting European contexts—Slovenia, France, and Poland—strategically instrumentalize Christianity within their anti-immigration agendas. Rather than using religion as a matter of faith, these parties recast Christianity as a cornerstone of national and European identity, positioning it in opposition to Islam and non-European migration. The study argues that such instrumentalization serves not only to construct a religiously defined national identity, but also to legitimize exclusionary policies. By analyzing selected political speeches, party manifestos, and media discourse, we explore how far-right actors frame Islam as incompatible with European values, reinforcing the division between “Christian Europe” and “foreign non-Christian migrants.” Drawing on recent scholarship on civilizational populism and religious boundary-making, we further assess how processes of globalization and European integration have been interpreted by populist parties to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment. Methodologically, we employ qualitative content analysis to identify recurring themes and rhetorical strategies, with a focus on the intersection of religion, nationalism, and migration. The findings contribute to debates on religious pluralism in contemporary Europe, shedding light on how far-right populism reframes pluralism and challenges secular principles across different political and cultural settings.

1. Introduction

In recent years, European far-right populist movements and political parties have strategically turned to religion, particularly Christianity, as a central element of their political messaging. No longer merely cultural or economic, the far-right’s discourse on immigration increasingly operates within a religified framework that seeks to delineate belonging and exclusion along civilizational lines. By framing Christianity as the essential foundation of European identity, and Islam as its threatening Other, these actors attempt to mobilize fears, legitimize exclusionary policies, and reassert nationalist sovereignty in an era marked by mass migration (Castles 2010) and globalization (Brubaker 2017; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022). In line with Peter Berger’s theory of pluralism, contemporary societies shaped by global migration do not simply display religious decline but undergo a structural transformation wherein multiple religions and secular worldviews coexist and interact in the public sphere (Berger 1967, 2014). This “double pluralism” is increasingly prominent in Europe, requiring both citizens and institutions to negotiate not only between various faith traditions, but also between sacred and secular forms of meaning-making (Berger 2014).

In this paper, we explore the instrumentalization of Christianity by selected far-right populist parties in Europe, focusing on how religious narratives are deployed to frame immigration as a civilizational threat. Drawing on qualitative content analysis of political speeches, party manifestos, and selected media coverage, our paper investigates the rhetorical strategies used to present Islam as incompatible with “Christian Europe.” The central argument is that far-right actors are not merely expressing cultural concerns, but actively constructing a form of religified nationalism, i.e., a synthesis of populist, nationalist, and religious discourses that seeks to recast European identity in theological and civilizational terms (Peker 2022).

While the link between populism and nationalism has been extensively theorized (Mudde 2007; Brubaker 2017), and while the role of religion in public life has been widely debated within post-secular theory (Casanova 1994; Asad 2003), the intersection of far-right populism, religious framing, and anti-immigration discourse remains underexplored. The existing literature tends to either focus on economic and cultural dimensions of populism (e.g., Norris and Inglehart 2019) or analyze religion in isolation from its political instrumentalization. This paper addresses that gap by conceptualizing the far-right’s discourse as civilizational populism (Yilmaz and Morieson 2022), where religion is mobilized not for theological purposes but as a political tool to define “the people” and exclude “the Other.”

Scientific literature (Martino and Papastathis 2024; Samaras 2025; Casanova 2017) finds that far-right parties adapt their rhetoric on religion depending on the level of religiosity among their electorate. In more religious environments, the emphasis on protecting traditional religious values is more pronounced. However, highly religious voters frequently remain loyal to Christian-democratic or conservative parties. The far right generally does not directly attract these voters as long as there is a strong link between faith and traditional political preferences, the so-called “vaccine effect”, that, due to increasing political dealignment, is gradually weakening (Arzheimer 2019, p. 238; Norris and Inglehart 2019, pp. 126–28). On the other hand, in societies where religiosity is low, far-right parties reframe religion; it primarily becomes a symbol of cultural heritage and a tool of nativist politics, rather than an expression of genuine spirituality or institutional belonging. Christianity serves as a marker of “Europeanness,” distinguishing “us” from “them,” targeting secular voters with a sentimental attachment to national tradition (Brubaker 2017, pp. 1197–99). Such political instrumentalization of religion relies on a broader tendency in both public and academic discourse to reduce religion to mere belief or identity, often sidelining its embodied, ritual, and material dimensions (Jurekovič 2023). Research further shows that the direct influence of religiosity on support for the far right is limited and primarily dependent on mediating factors, such as identification with Christian-democratic parties, social values, and patterns of ethnic perception. In France, for instance, high religiosity can even increase the likelihood of supporting the radical right, if the party clearly positions itself against contemporary social changes (Arzheimer 2019, p. 239).

Religion often acquires the role of a symbolic channel for transmitting and articulating insecurities associated with mass migration. Far-right rhetoric frequently interprets migration (especially of Muslims) as a threat not only to economic security but, primarily, to the cultural and religious identity of the native population. Here, religion is no longer an exclusively personal spiritual experience but becomes a “cultural weapon” in the process of political mobilization (Brubaker 2017, p. 1196). Recent systematic analysis of Slovenian media coverage shows that mass media, especially in periods of heightened migration (1992–1993, 1999–2001, 2015–2016), tend to portray refugees and migrants as the “other,” mobilizing stereotypical, security-oriented, and exclusionary frames that reinforce boundaries of national belonging (Smrdelj 2021). Political science observes that in times of mass migration, religious markers (e.g., Christianity versus Islam) serve as the connective tissue for newly formed collectives of fear and insecurity; thus, cultural and ethnic differences are transformed into political polarization (Kaya 2019, p. 7). Urban studies also show that isolated ethnoreligious communities and fewer intergroup contacts increase the potential for Islamophobia and support for exclusionary policies (Helbling and Traunmüller 2020, pp. 17–19). The normalization and impact of Islamophobia as a form of boundary-marking has been observed not only in Western European societies but also in the context of the rest of post-socialist Southeastern Europe, where it acts as a barrier to peacebuilding and inclusive citizenship (Zalta 2020).

The article is structured as follows. The first section outlines the theoretical framework, integrating key literature on populism, religious nationalism, and post-secularism. The second section details the methodology and presents the selection of cases. The third section conducts an analysis of political and media discourses in Poland, France, and Slovenia, highlighting dominant frames and rhetorical strategies. The final section reflects on the broader implications of religified populism for pluralism, secular democracy, and the evolving contours of European identity.

By offering a comparative, theory-driven, and empirically grounded analysis, this article contributes to the growing body of research on the far-right populism, nationalism, and religion. It argues that the redefinition of Europe as a “Christian fortress” is not simply nostalgic or defensive, but a deliberate political project that reshapes the terms of migration, belonging, and secularism in the 21st century. While comparative studies on the far right and religion in Europe are growing, most focus either on single-country cases or on broader regional trends. This article complements the existing research by providing a focused, cross-contextual analysis of how religious framing operates in three distinct institutional settings. By juxtaposing Poland, France, and Slovenia, the study highlights both commonalities in exclusionary strategies and context-specific adaptations, thereby enriching the understanding of religious instrumentalization in contemporary European populism.

Our article makes three key contributions to the existing literature on religion and the populist radical right in Europe. First, it introduces the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and its discursive deployment of Christianity as a civilizational identity marker, an empirical case that has received little to no attention in the comparative scholarship to date. While most research has concentrated on Western and Northern European parties (e.g., PVV, RN, FPÖ, DF), post-socialist EU countries like Slovenia remain underexplored despite exhibiting similar patterns of religious framing.

Second, the article expands the theoretical discussion by highlighting the specific mechanisms through which civilizational Christianity, devoid of doctrinal content, becomes instrumentalized to define in-groups and out-groups in secular yet nationalist contexts. In the Slovenian case, Christian identity is neither invoked for its theological authority nor for social conservatism, but for its capacity to affirm national belonging and differentiate from Islam, thus operating as a form of cultural boundary-making. Third, the article draws attention to a normative blind spot in much of the existing literature: while scholars have documented how far-right parties employ Christian symbols and references, they have paid insufficient attention to the implications of this rhetoric for religious freedom, pluralism, and minority inclusion. By emphasizing this dimension, the article reframes the debate and calls for a more critical evaluation of how the populist instrumentalization of religion erodes democratic norms under the guise of defending liberal values.

While the analysis is extensive, it is limited to three countries and three linguistic corpora (French, Polish, and Slovenian). The study does not include interviews or ethnographic fieldwork with far-right actors or affected Muslim communities. Furthermore, digital and algorithmic amplification of such discourses (e.g., social media virality) remains outside the scope, although it is acknowledged as a relevant future direction.

2. Methodology

Methodologically, the article employs a qualitative content analysis of selected far-right parties in several contrasting European contexts; Poland (Law and Justice, PiS), where religion and nationhood are institutionally entangled; France (Rassemblement National, RN), which upholds a strong secular republican tradition; and Slovenia (Slovenian Democratic Party, SDS), which occupies an intermediate position as a post-socialist society with both historical Catholic traditions and significant secularization trends, thus providing a unique setting for examining how far-right actors mobilize religious and cultural symbols in a context that oscillates between inherited religiosity and increasingly pluralistic, post-secular public discourse. This comparison enables us to assess how different secular–religious regimes shape the discursive strategies of far-right populists. To provide a robust foundation for qualitative analysis, the empirical material combines several forms of political communication including speeches, televised debates, and digital party outreach across peak periods of migration-related discourse in Europe. This approach enables the study to capture not only formal policy positions but also the rhetorical and narrative strategies deployed by far-right actors in real time. In this study, I do not treat Law and Justice (PiS) and the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) as “classical” far-right actors. Following the now standard typology, I classify them as populist radical right (PRR) parties, i.e., parties whose core ideology combines nativism, authoritarianism, and populism, while operating within electoral democracy, in contrast to the anti-democratic “extreme right” (Mudde 2007). For case coding and cross-checks, I draw on The PopuList 3.0 (EiQCC) and its country reports, which code PiS as populist far right (borderline POP/FR 2005–2015; fully thereafter) and SDS as populist since 2000 and far right since 2015 (Rooduijn et al. 2024; The PopuList 3.0, Poland 2023; The PopuList 3.0, Slovenia 2023). Additional expert-survey indicators (e.g., CHES; V-Party) corroborate their authoritarian-nationalist and anti-immigration profiles (Bakker et al. 2022; Lindberg et al. 2022). Party-group affiliation in the European Parliament (e.g., SDS in the EPP) is therefore not dispositive for typological placement, which rests on ideology and discourse rather than transnational alignments (Mudde 2007; Rooduijn et al. 2024).

Poland and France represent two distinct models of state–religion relations in contemporary Europe (Taylor 2007; Scott 2018). Poland has historically been strongly tied to the Catholic Church, which played a crucial role in maintaining national identity during foreign rule and under the socialist regime. Today, Catholicism remains deeply embedded in the national discourse and political sphere, evident in the close relationship between the church and the state. In contrast, France is founded on the strict principle of laïcité, a secular framework that separates the state from religion and limits the visibility of religion in public life. Slovenia, meanwhile, occupies a middle ground between these models. While predominantly Roman Catholic, the country experienced a complex secularization process during its socialist past, resulting in a more pluralistic and less institutionalized relationship between the church and state. Religious identity in Slovenia tends to be more culturally than politically mobilized, with religion playing a symbolic, though not dominant, role in public discourse. This ambivalence in Slovenian nation- and state-building has also manifested in moments of exclusion—such as the case of the ‘erased’, where ambiguities in democratization and Europeanization were made visible through administrative and political practices (Mandelc and Učakar 2011). This nuanced position makes Slovenia a valuable case for examining how intermediate models of state–religion relations influence the incorporation of religious frames in political rhetoric. Nonetheless, Muslim communities have often been positioned as the “Other” in both institutional and popular narratives. These patterns echo recent findings on descendants of Bosnian migrants in Slovenia, who frequently construct a multilayered sense of belonging and contribute to religious pluralism at the everyday, practical level (Ješe Perković 2025). Taken together, these differences in institutional and cultural frameworks enable a comparative analysis of how various European contexts shape the use of religious frames in political discourse.

To analyze party materials and statements, the study draws selectively from frame analysis (Entman 1993; Snow and Benford 1988), focusing on diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames, as well as elements of the discourse-historical approach (Wodak 2015), to explore how religious identity is linked to historical myths, collective trauma, and national continuity. Our analysis is based on a purposive selection of several public statements, party manifestos, and media interventions from each country, concentrating on moments of intensified migration debates. Rather than conducting a comprehensive coding or aiming for quantitative generalization, the study identifies recurring themes and rhetorical strategies related to the instrumentalization of Christianity, such as civilizational framing, the construction of a “Christian Europe,” and the exclusion of Islam, primarily to illustrate typical discursive patterns. We acknowledge that the limited sample size and depth-oriented approach reflect an interpretative, qualitative methodology, which emphasizes contextual understanding and thereby serves as an illustrative examination of broader socio-political processes. Reliability was supported through repeated readings and triangulation of themes against established theoretical frameworks. Regarding corpus delineation and source hierarchy we analytically distinguish between (i) primary party sources, t.i. foundational documents and statutory texts, recent electoral programmes (past five years), programmatic booklets, draft bills, leaders’ official speeches and press statements, and (ii) mediated representations, t.i. news reports, editorials, talk shows, and televised debates. Claims about party positions are evidenced through primary sources; media materials are used to trace diffusion, resonance, and mainstreaming of frames in public discourse. For each case we purposively sampled texts in 2015–2025 (peaks 2015–2016 and 2021–2022) in the original languages (French/Polish/Slovenian), cross-checking themes across document types to enhance reliability. The primary document set includes, inter alia: Bezpieczna Przyszłość Polaków (PiS 2023) and the national programme (2019) (PiS 2019, 2023); RN’s presidential/legislative programme materials, including 22 mesures pour 2022 and subsequent programme updates (Rassemblement National 2022, 2024); and the SDS programme with sections on migration and European policy (SDS, s. VIII). Advertising collateral (e.g., billboards) produced by parties is treated as primary campaign material when provenance is clear; where a media photograph is the only public record, it is cited as documentation of a primary artefact, not as a secondary interpretive source. (Rassemblement National 2022, 2024; PiS 2019, 2023; Slovenska Demokratska Stranka (SDS) n.d.). Leaders’ speeches are treated as primary sources only when delivered in official party fora or published on verified party/government channels; otherwise, they are coded as mediated political communication and used solely for tracing diffusion and resonance, not for core position attribution.

3. Theoretical Framework: Religion, Nationalism, and the Framing of Civilizational Threats

To understand how far-right populist parties mobilize religious and nationalist narratives around migration, this section develops a multidimensional theoretical framework that situates these dynamics within broader global and European contexts. Drawing on Brubaker’s (2017) notion of religion as a cultural rather than doctrinal boundary, far-right populist discourses utilize Christian identity instruments to construct a notion of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ Yilmaz and Morieson (2022) demonstrate that this process is deeply embedded in the civilizational framing of Muslims as existential threats to a culturally imagined ‘Christian Europe.’ Casanova’s (1994) concept of post-secular public spheres further explains how religion becomes re-politicized to legitimize nationalist exclusion.

Following Brubaker’s notion of “civilizational framing,” religion is not treated as a theological system but rather as a cultural marker that defines in-group belonging and legitimizes exclusionary practices. In this context, Christianity becomes a symbol of European identity, while Islam is constructed as the incompatible Other. The Polish case reflects a religious-nationalist framing grounded in historical mythologies of Catholic martyrdom and resistance (e.g., the Battle of Vienna), whereas the French example deploys a secularized variant, where laïcité operates as a normative boundary marker between the Republic and perceived religious encroachments (Casanova 2006, p. 75). Slovenia occupies an intermediate position within this spectrum, where anti-Islamic rhetoric tends to intensify primarily in response to specific socio-political events rather than through entrenched institutional or doctrinal frameworks. This rhetoric is often intertwined with feelings of cultural insecurity and draws upon the instrumentalization of historical memories such as Ottoman incursions and the recurrent perception of Islam as an alien presence. Consequently, Slovenia represents a case where anti-Islamic discourses emerge as a complex interplay of global migration trends, localized collective memories, and the diffusion of broader European cultural tensions into the national context. Rather than a stable, institutionalized civilizational narrative, Slovenia’s far-right uses a more flexible and event-driven framing strategy to construct Christian identity as both a cultural code and a civilizational boundary that challenges the presence and legitimacy of Islam.

Building on Balibar’s formulation of “racism without races,” we understand the far right’s invocation of “European Christian civilization” as a form of culturalized boundary-making that reifies an imagined continuity of Europe across time and space, while coding Islam as an inherently incompatible out-group. In this perspective, racialization proceeds through civilizational and cultural signifiers rather than biological ones: religious difference is translated into quasi-ethnic hierarchy, and exclusion is legitimated as the protection of a unified historical subject (“Europe”/“the nation”) (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991; Meer and Modood 2009; Garner and Selod 2015). This conceptualization sharpens our reading of discursive moves that collapse doctrinal diversity within Christianity into a single civilizational bloc and cast Muslims as civilizational outsiders, even when claims are couched in the neutral grammar of values, security, and laïcité (Brubaker 2017; Roy 2019).

What makes this landscape particularly dynamic is its embeddedness in wider European and global currents. Echoing arguments by Sassen (2006) and Favell (2008), we suggest that the rise in exclusionary religious narratives cannot be understood in isolation from anxieties surrounding globalization, European integration processes, immigration, and shifting sovereignty. Populist leaders are especially adept at latching onto such uncertainties, reworking them through the figure of the Muslim migrant, a trope that transcends borders yet readily adapts to local historical memories and policy environments.

What emerges across these cases is not a story of religion as fixed doctrine, but of religion re-imagined as a discursive and symbolic tool, sometimes a buffer against migration, sometimes a badge of heritage, always flexible enough to anchor anxieties about belonging and future loss. Framing theory thus proves especially useful for tracing the mechanics of this process, from polarizing headlines and viral tweets to parliamentary manifestos. The following discussion builds directly on this comparative, multidimensional framework. The goal is not only to map how religion and nationalism are mobilized in anti-Islamic populism, but also to critically assess what these shifting boundaries might mean for pluralism, democracy, and the evolving fabric of European societies.

4. Findings: Comparative Analysis of Islam as a Civilizational Threat in Far-Right Discourses in Poland, France, and Slovenia

This section presents a comparative analysis of how far-right political actors in Poland, France, and Slovenia frame Islam as a civilizational threat to a culturally and religiously defined “Christian Europe.” Drawing on political speeches, party manifestos, and selected media discourse, it identifies recurring rhetorical strategies used to legitimize anti-immigration agendas through religious narratives across these distinct national contexts. We report results using diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames (Entman 1993; Snow and Benford 1988), and apply the source hierarchy set in Section 2. Across all cases, diagnostic frames cast Islam as civilizationally incompatible with “Christian Europe”; prognostic frames justify restrictions (e.g., visibility, institutions, flows); motivational frames mobilize defence of heritage/values. Primary party texts anchor claims about party positions; mediated materials trace diffusion and mainstreaming. (Brubaker 2017; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022). As an operational rule, we code as covert/culturalized racism those utterances that simultaneously (i) posit a continuous, unified European or national identity anchored in Christianity, (ii) mark Islam as civilizationally incompatible with that identity, and (iii) justify differential treatment or visibility restrictions via ostensibly value-neutral language (e.g., “defending laïcité,” “security,” “heritage”).

4.1. Poland: Law and Justice (PiS) and Right-Wing Media

In Poland, the former ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has persistently mobilized religious symbolism to cast the country as a “Bulwark of Christianity,” linking national cohesion and security to tight migration control and the safeguarding of a Christian-coded national culture (Dudzińska and Kotnarowski 2019; Pankowski 2018). Party leaders, especially Jarosław Kaczyński and Andrzej Duda, routinely present Polishness as inseparable from Catholicism, portraying Muslim migrants as civilizationally misaligned with national values despite their negligible demographic presence (Roy 2019; Krzyżanowski 2020). Crucially, these cues are programmatically anchored: a cross-reading of the 2019 national programme and the 2023 Bezpieczna Przyszłość Polaków shows how diagnostic and prognostic frames on migration travel from programme language into leaders’ statements and draft bills (PiS 2019, 2023).

This narrative is reinforced through historical references such as the Battle of Vienna (1683), with PiS politicians equating contemporary migration with a repeat of historical invasions. For example, in 2015, Kaczyński warned that accepting refugees would “change our culture” and bring “parasites and dangerous diseases,” rhetoric widely condemned as Islamophobic and reminiscent of earlier anti-Semitic tropes (Politico.eu 2023; Krzyżanowski 2020).

Right-wing media, most notably the state broadcaster TVP and popular weeklies such as wSieci and Do Rzeczy, play a central role in disseminating this message. TVP has aired special segments warning of the “Islamization of Europe,” often featuring manipulated images and alarmist reports (Krzyżanowski 2020). The infamous 2016 cover of wSieci, “The Islamic Rape of Europe,” which depicted a white woman threatened by dark-skinned male hands, drew widespread condemnation for invoking racist and sexist fears while echoing wartime propaganda (Pankowski 2018; DW 2016). Further, right-wing Catholic media such as Radio Maryja and Nasz Dziennik amplify anti-Muslim narratives by presenting Islam as a civilizational and spiritual enemy, frequently inviting clergy and commentators who cast Muslims as an existential threat to Poland’s Christian essence (Arzheimer 2019; Berntzen 2019).

This media-political nexus is visible in discursive campaigns such as “Stop Islamization of Europe,” referenced both in PiS parliamentary rhetoric and in media-sponsored petitions, where Islam is not only framed as a faith but as an invading “civilizational bloc.” Such frames, as Krzyżanowski (2020) notes, have contributed to the normalization of Islamophobia and the legitimation of anti-immigrant policy, even amid negligible real-world Muslim migration. In sum, Polish civilizational populism relies on a potent fusion of historical myth, religious nationalism, and media amplification, producing boundaries that define who can truly belong to the nation.

4.2. France: National Rally (RN) and Political Figures

RN’s 22 measures pour 2022 and subsequent programme updates (2024) operationalize laïcité as a policy toolkit (school meals, public dress, public space) while tightening migration filters; these texts supply the primary diagnostic/prognostic frame from which televised debates draw simplified slogans (Rassemblement National 2022, 2024). In line with RN programme commitments on immigration and public order, the party uses laïcité, a principle of secularism, to construct an exclusionary model of Frenchness, wherein Islam is presented as fundamentally incompatible with the Republic’s civic and cultural core (Fernando 2014; Peker 2021). Marine Le Pen and prominent RN figures have systematically targeted Muslim practices in public life, demanding bans on halal food in school cafeterias, headscarves (hijab), burkinis at beaches, and public prayers, rationalizing these stances as defending laïcité and republican values (The Independent 2014). During the 2022 presidential campaign, Le Pen called for the banning of the headscarf “in all public spaces,” claiming that Islamic visibility threatens French cohesion (AA 2022).

Central to RN rhetoric is the “Great Replacement” (Grand Remplacement) conspiracy theory, widely popularized by essayist Renaud Camus and adopted by both Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour. This narrative warns of a demographic and cultural “submersion” (“submersion migratoire”) of European and specifically Christian populations by Muslim migrants, a theme heavily echoed across RN’s electoral material and televised debates (Camus et al. 2017; Peker 2022). In the wake of terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016, RN figures called for closing mosques, increased surveillance of Muslim communities, and linked Islam not just to extremism but to civilizational incompatibility with France (Fernando 2014; Marzouki et al. 2016).

Earlier, Jean-Marie Le Pen declared Islam “incompatible with secular society” (RFI 2011), and the party’s discursive framing has been echoed by other right-wing media and politicians, such as Éric Ciotti (Les Républicains) and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour (Marzouki et al. 2016). Even outside the RN, elements of laïcité have become a vehicle for ethno-nationalist and anti-Muslim politics, as seen in debates over the 2010 ban on full-face veils (French Senate Votes to Ban Islamic Full Veil in Public 2010). Far-right and mainstream actors alike thus reinforce a vision of religious pluralism that is “hierarchized”—with Christianity as heritage and Islam as threat.

French media also play a pivotal role: influential outlets such as Le Figaro and CNews regularly host debates in which Islam is associated with insecurity, terrorism, or lack of integration (Peker 2021). The pattern of framing laïcité as a bulwark against “Islamization” has become central to the public narrative, legitimizing tough anti-immigration measures and normalizing everyday exclusion (Marzouki et al. 2016).

4.3. Slovenia: Slovene Democratic Party (SDS)

In February 2021, former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša shared a tweet on the social media platform Twitter, which explicitly claimed that no book other than the Qur’an had caused more “death, suffering, oppression, impoverishment, and societal backwardness” (24ur.com 2021). The post, which compared the Communist Manifesto to the Qur’an in terms of destructive impact, sparked significant controversy. The Islamic community in Slovenia publicly condemned the tweet, emphasizing the danger of oversimplified and propagandistic comparisons and calling for greater respect for religious texts in pluralistic societies. The national Turkish media outlet TRT Haber reported on the incident, framing Janša’s post as part of a broader pattern of disseminating anti-Islamic views (ibid.).

Beyond isolated comments, this rhetorical positioning is substantiated by official party communications. This reading is anchored in the SDS programme, including Section VIII (Migration and European Policy), which frames migration through a civilizational lens and conditions inclusion on adherence to historically rooted cultural norms (SDS, s. VIII). During the 2022 parliamentary elections, for instance, the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) explicitly reaffirmed civilizational narratives that closely mirror Western European Christianist frames. In its public response to the question “Should Europe remain Christian?”, the party stated that “European civilization is based on Christian faith, Greek philosophy, Roman law, and the Enlightenment,” further asserting that the values of Article 2 of the EU Treaty are “inseparably linked to the Christian heritage of Europe.” While acknowledging the secular character of contemporary European states, the SDS emphasized that Christian-majority societies are “the most tolerant toward different opinions and beliefs,” concluding that the preservation of Christianity is “crucial for the long-term survival of European civilization.” In parallel, the nationalist party DOM has gone even further, declaring that “Europe’s foundations are certainly not Muslim” and that “Europeans in the 21st century remain Christians—morally and culturally—even in the absence of personal belief.” (RTV Slovenija 2022). These statements illustrate how Slovenian far-right actors strategically frame Christianity as a culturally essentialized identity marker that implicitly defines Islam as incompatible with core European values. The Slovenian case thus exemplifies how populist actors in post-socialist contexts harness both religious heritage and geopolitical narratives in dialogue with transnational populist trends.

This incident illustrates a key feature of contemporary civilizational populism in Central Europe: the political instrumentalization of anti-communist rhetoric redirected toward cultural and religious spheres, specifically Islam, which is not merely portrayed as a religion but as a civilizational threat. Such framing aligns with broader populist strategies in Europe, where Islam is depicted as incompatible with Western values and Christian heritage, serving as the symbolic “Other” in a narrative of cultural defence (Brubaker 2017; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022).

4.4. Comparative Perspective: Strategic Religification and Contextual Variation in Far-Right Discourses

The preceding case studies of Poland, France, and Slovenia illuminate a shared pattern within contemporary European far-right populism: the strategic use of religion, primarily Christianity, as a symbolic boundary-marker to construct Islam as an existential and civilizational threat. While the above-mentioned cases differ significantly in their institutional arrangements, historical experiences, and levels of religiosity, they converge discursively on the production of a “Christian Europe” imperilled by Muslim presence, whether real or imagined. What emerges from this comparison is not merely the deployment of anti-Islam rhetoric, but the adaptive instrumentalization of religion as a political resource tailored to divergent national contexts. A key technique is the narration of Europe or the nation as an unbroken historical community with a fixed cultural core, a move that renders internal pluralism deviant and licences the exclusion of Muslims as an act of restoration rather than discrimination.

Across all three countries, Islam is framed not only as a religious difference but as a proxy for broader anxieties ranging from migration and demographic change to perceived threats to sovereignty and identity. In Poland, the notion of a historically ordained Catholic mission positions Islam as alien to the nation’s religious heritage. In France, a secular-nationalist logic disqualifies Islamic visibility from the public sphere under the rubric of laïcité (secularism). In Slovenia, Islam is embedded into a broader populist narrative that links religious difference with post-communist vulnerability and cultural insecurity. In each case, Islam becomes the discursive vessel through which far-right actors articulate fears of moral decline, cultural loss, and civilizational dilution.

Despite these variations, the civilizational frame functions similarly. It situates the nation within a broader transhistorical struggle between an idealized, homogeneous “Christian Europe” and an encroaching, incompatible Islamic Other. This reframing of religion from a personal or spiritual domain to a marker of collective identity echoes Brubaker’s (2017) notion of religion as culture, wherein religious references serve primarily to signify inclusion or exclusion within a national community.

Looking at contextual specificities and strategic adaptation, we notice that key differences in the religious-political configurations of each country shape the particular forms. Poland exemplifies a case of religious-national symbiosis, where the Catholic Church plays an enduring role in national identity formation. Here, far-right actors can directly invoke theological and moral arguments, knowing they resonate with large segments of the electorate. France represents the opposite pole, a strictly secular public order, where religion is mobilized paradoxically to protect secularism itself. The far right employs a civilizational logic that displaces religiosity with cultural essentialism; Islam is not rejected for being “non-Christian,” but for violating presumed secular norms. Slovenia, on the other hand, operates as a hybrid case. While nominally Catholic and shaped by a socialist secular legacy, it lacks both the religious institutional dominance of Poland and the rigid secularism of France. This allows for greater flexibility in deploying religious rhetoric, which is often less doctrinal and more symbolic, serving as a code for national tradition, European belonging, and ideological antagonism, especially against “leftism” and pluralism.

These differences correspond to what Casanova (2017) and Arzheimer (2019) have described as the “vaccine effect” of religiosity. In more religious societies, traditional religious parties tend to absorb religious voters, limiting far-right appeal unless the latter can position themselves as equally or more morally protective. In less religious contexts, religion becomes a “cultural signifier” rather than a spiritual motivator, allowing the far right to appropriate Christian identity without theological commitments.

The comparative lens also underscores differences in the media and rhetorical infrastructures through which anti-Islamic framings circulate. In Poland, a tightly knit media-politics nexus centred around state broadcasters and right-wing press facilitates the mainstreaming of Islamophobic narratives. In France, the normalization of anti-Muslim rhetoric has occurred gradually, expanding from the far-right fringe into mainstream centrist discourse, particularly around debates on secularism, integration, and terrorism. In Slovenia, while high-profile statements (e.g., Janša’s tweet) attract national attention, the institutionalization of anti-Islamic narratives is more limited and primarily concentrated in elite-driven, partisan outlets, without full penetration into mainstream public consensus. This variation reveals how discursive opportunity structures (Koopmans and Statham 1999) shape the visibility, legitimacy, and resonance of exclusionary religious narratives in different national media and political environments.

The comparison between Poland, France, and Slovenia reveals a shared civilizational grammar within far-right populist discourse, wherein Christianity is less a theological commitment and more a flexible signifier of national and cultural purity. While the rhetoric converges on depicting Islam as incompatible with “our” values, the discursive strategies diverge according to historical legacies, levels of institutional religiosity, and the normative configurations of church–state relations. This empirical reality echoes Berger’s argument that religious pluralism challenges both religious monopolies and secularist assumptions, creating public spaces in which belonging and legitimacy are perpetually negotiated (Berger 1996, 2014). Whether invoked in defence of the Catholic nation, the secular republic, or a post-communist European identity, religious references function as tools of boundary construction, enabling the far right to articulate belonging, justify exclusion, and recast pluralism as a threat rather than a value.

5. Discussion: Implications for Pluralism, Secularism, and Society

Slovenia adds empirical leverage to a literature still dominated by Western and Northern European cases, such as analyses of the PVV, RN, and SD (Morieson 2021; Roy 2019; Berntzen 2019). Despite lower average religiosity and a post-socialist secular legacy, the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) deploys a civilizational Christian register that converges with patterns observed for RN and PiS. This is visible, inter alia, in SDS’s official 2022 campaign response to the question “Should Europe remain Christian?”, which links Article 2 TEU values to Europe’s Christian heritage and frames Christianity as foundational to European tolerance and civilization (RTV Slovenija 2022). The comparison thus indicates that Christianist boundary-making is not contingent on high religiosity or tight church–state fusion; rather, it adapts across institutional ecologies and party organizations, with comparable downstream effects on pluralism and minority inclusion.

This case adds empirical depth to ongoing debates about the diffusion of Christianist civilizational rhetoric across Europe. It shows that Slovenia, often overlooked in comparative studies of the European far right, displays discursive patterns remarkably similar to those found in the programmes of parties like the Danish People’s Party (DF) or the Austrian FPÖ (Peker 2022; Brubaker 2017). However, unlike in Western Europe, where these discourses operate within a long-standing liberal democratic framework, the Slovenian case reflects a post-socialist trajectory where Christianity was previously marginalized under communist secularism. Its reactivation by far-right actors thus carries a distinct ideological and historical charge: it functions not only as a civilizational marker but also as a tool for cultural restoration and geopolitical reorientation toward a “core” Europe imagined as Christian, white, and anti-Muslim. Although the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) is formally affiliated with the European People’s Party (EPP), international expert surveys and comparative datasets position it alongside paradigmatic radical right parties. The Chapel Hill Expert Survey, for example, scores SDS 8.6/10 on cultural authoritarianism, on par with RN or PiS, while V-Party data confirm its emphasis on nationalism, anti-immigration, and Christianist identity claims (Bakker et al. 2022; Lindberg et al. 2022). Notably, SDS’s ideological profile sharply diverges from typical EPP parties, despite its formal membership. Recent research (Albertazzi et al. 2025) further demonstrates that many populist radical right parties—including SDS—increasingly exhibit mass party features, combining robust grassroots organization with activist-driven dissemination of ideologically and religiously coded narratives (see also Betz 2019). These organizational foundations allow such parties to act as ‘cultural brokers’ in ways that sustain and amplify exclusionary populist and identitarian projects across diverse contexts. Taken together, these findings empirically justify Slovenia’s inclusion in comparative analysis and complicate simple binaries between ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’ right formations in Europe.

Beyond empirical novelty, this article aims to advance the debate by addressing a critical theoretical gap. Contemporary studies of far-right religious discourse often fail to engage with the normative consequences of this instrumentalization for religious freedom, pluralism, and the civic inclusion of Muslim communities. When Christianity is framed not as a living faith but as a civilizational boundary marker, it legitimizes exclusionary identity politics while cloaking them in the language of tolerance and human rights. The Slovenian case illustrates how even in relatively secular societies, such rhetoric can contribute to the erosion of democratic pluralism by casting Muslims as external to the European political and moral community. As such, it invites greater critical attention within populism and religion studies to the illiberal effects of “civilizational Christianity” on interreligious coexistence and minority rights.

The following sections extend the comparative analysis by examining how far-right civilizational narratives affect three interlocking domains—religious pluralism, secular governance, and democratic cohesion—situating these developments within wider transnational dynamics.

5.1. Erosion of Religious Pluralism

Our findings indicate that far-right actors routinely cast Islam not as one religion among many, but as a civilizational antagonist that threatens the moral fabric of “Christian Europe” (Brubaker 2017). In Poland, this trope legitimizes proposals to restrict halal slaughter and mosque construction even though the Muslim population is statistically negligible (Dudzińska and Kotnarowski 2019). French debates echo the same logic when calls to ban headscarves or halal menus invoke laïcité as a weapon of cultural self-defence rather than a guarantor of equal liberty (Fernando 2014). Slovenian populists employ a lighter, heritage-based register of Christianity as “Europe’s soul”, yet still frame Islam as fundamentally misaligned with the nation’s cultural DNA. Such discourses shrink the normative space for minority faiths, encouraging legal exceptionalism and social stigmatization that can easily extend to Jews, Sikhs, or Eastern Christians once Islam is successfully “othered” (Krzyżanowski 2020).

5.2. Instrumentalization and Reconfiguration of Secularism

Berger (1996) observed the “retreat” of secularism as both a global and a European phenomenon, a trend visible in the recent re-politicization of Christian heritage even in avowedly secular states. Secularism itself is being re-scripted through ethnoreligious lenses. In France, Marine Le Pen’s claim that banning Islamic dress merely “defends secular values” reframes laïcité as a cultural boundary marker rather than a neutral framework (Peker 2021). Poland’s governing elites, by contrast, normalize open church–state fusion while insisting that Islam undermines Europe’s secular heritage—an ironic posture that subordinates constitutional secularism to Catholic national identity (Casanova 2017). Even in post-socialist Slovenian context, the Slovene Democratic Party (SDS) celebrates secular institutions only insofar as they “preserve Europe’s Christian roots,” converting neutrality into preferentialism (V-Dem 2025). In all three cases, secularism mutates from a procedural principle into a majoritarian identity claim, eroding judicial impartiality and weakening public trust in democratic arbitration (Scott 2018).

5.3. Social Cohesion and Democratic Backsliding

Binary civilizational framings intensify social polarization by hardening the distinction between the virtuous “people” and a suspect “Muslim Other” (Wodak 2015). In France, polls show that perceived cultural distance, more than economic anxiety, drives support for exclusionary parties (Arzheimer 2019). Polish rhetoric turns the virtually absent Muslim minority into a spectre that justifies moral panic and consolidates ethno-Catholic solidarity (Pankowski 2018). Slovenian populists mobilize nostalgia for Christian Europe to delegitimize critics as “un-European,” thereby shrinking discursive space for dissent (Kaya 2019). Such dynamics correlate with measurable declines in democratic quality, ranging from constraints on media pluralism in Poland to strategic lawsuits against journalists in Slovenia, all under the banner of “protecting civilization” (Lindberg et al. 2022). These patterns co-vary with expert indicators of cultural authoritarianism and nationalist positioning (Bakker et al. 2022; Lindberg et al. 2022).

5.4. Transnational Resonance and Convergent Strategies

Despite divergent church–state regimes, far-right movements share a transnational grammar. Slogans about the “Great Replacement” migrate seamlessly from French talk shows to Polish parliamentary speeches and Slovenian Twitter feeds (Camus et al. 2017). Activist networks and alternative media channels accelerate this diffusion, allowing parties with distinct theological landscapes to converge on identical exclusionary frames (Yilmaz and Morieson 2022). Recent organizational research even suggests that many populist radical right parties cultivate robust membership structures reminiscent of mass parties, enabling them to disseminate civilizational narratives through grassroots socialization, not merely top-down media spectacle (Albertazzi et al. 2025). The SDS exemplifies this pattern, marrying digital outreach with local “ambassadors to the community” who reiterate Christianist talking points door-to-door.

An additional, transnational vector concerns Russian hybrid influence in the consolidation of Christian-civilizational frames across Europe. Parliamentary and expert inquiries document a combination of disinformation operations, covert or opaque political support, and “traditional values” norm-entrepreneurship that travels through party and civil-society networks (European Parliament 2023). While not a determinant of domestic party positions, these interventions have at times provided resources, discursive templates, and amplification for radical right narratives that cast migration and Islam as threats to a Christian Europe (Shekhovtsov 2017; Stoeckl 2020). Accordingly, in what follows, I treat Russian involvement as a contextual amplifier that interacts with domestic opportunity structures and the post-2015 migration conjuncture, rather than as an exogenous cause.

5.5. Liberal Illiberalism and the Reappropriation of Democratic Values

A striking paradox is emerging. Far-right leaders deploy the lexicon of liberalism—tolerance, women’s rights, free speech—to justify illiberal exclusions. By defining liberty as a historical Christian achievement, they invert pluralism’s core logic and re-embed universal values in a narrow ethnocultural matrix (Moffitt 2017). This rhetorical sleight of hand allows parties to stigmatize Muslims without overtly rejecting liberal principles, facilitating what Brubaker calls “civilizational securitization” (Brubaker 2017). The Slovenian context illustrates how even low-religiosity societies can embrace this inversion; Christianity becomes a secularized heritage badge that authorizes gatekeeping, while Islam is cast as inherently illiberal and therefore legitimately constrained (Roy 2019). Over time, such discursive asymmetry normalizes legal double standards, e.g., differential scrutiny of religious charities, and chips away at the procedural equality that undergirds democratic citizenship (Meer and Modood 2009).

5.6. Normative Implications

Such paradox is not merely rhetorical; it has profound consequences for pluralist democracy and civic equality. By foregrounding the normative impact of religious instrumentalization, we move beyond descriptive mapping of Christianist discourse and instead interrogate its deeper societal effects. While the literature has examined the ways in which far-right actors strategically deploy Christianity as a heritage or civilizational marker (Brubaker 2017; Morieson 2021), the long-term consequences for democratic norms, especially where the rhetoric of liberal values is repurposed to justify exclusion, remain insufficiently explored.

The Slovenian case, in particular, shows how appeals to “European civilization” can normalize subtle forms of norm erosion. Concepts like tolerance, equality, or freedom become redefined within a narrow cultural frame and monopolized to defend exclusivist agendas. This amounts to a discursive reappropriation of liberalism, in which universal values are severed from their inclusive foundations and instrumentalized for ethnocultural gatekeeping. Literature has termed this dynamic “liberal illiberalism” (Moffitt 2017) or “civilizational securitization” (Brubaker 2017; Kaya 2019), but the full normative costs for democratic theory and lived pluralism require further scrutiny. Analytically, this corresponds to what Balibar terms “racism without races,” i.e., a culturalized form of exclusion where civilizational tropes displace explicit racial categories while performing equivalent boundary-making (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991; Garner and Selod 2015).

The shift from theological to cultural Christianity enables far-right actors to avoid direct accusations of bigotry, marginalizing Islam not primarily through overt racism but through appeals to civilizational continuity and reasonableness (Roy 2019). In post-socialist, low-religiosity contexts such as Slovenia, these moves become strategies for re-bordering identity, and their impact on religious freedom and civic equality is considerable. Muslims are positioned as structural outsiders, subject to discursive exclusion and potential legal exceptionalism (Meer and Modood 2009).

In sum, these transformations underscore how exclusionary civilizational frames can quietly reshape the boundaries of democratic belonging under the guise of defending liberalism. This selective and conditional application of rights deserves sustained critical attention, not only from scholars of populism and religion, but from all concerned with the future of pluralism in Europe.

6. Conclusions

Our article set out to examine how far-right populist actors across three contrasting European contexts, laicist France, deeply Catholic Poland, and post-socialist Slovenia, instrumentalize Christianity within their anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric. Despite distinct religious traditions and institutional histories, all three cases reveal a convergent pattern: Christianity is less mobilized as a living faith than as a civilizational boundary marker, a powerful symbol for policing the limits of belonging and for legitimizing the exclusion of “the Other,” most notably Muslims. By including Slovenia, a case too often overlooked in comparative research, alongside France and Poland, the analysis both complicates prevailing typologies and uncovers how Christianist discourse can thrive across sharply differing environments. Whether invoked as a bulwark against “Islamic encroachment,” to buttress national identity amidst post-communist insecurity, or as a secularized badge defending republican values, religious references are strategically redeployed to recast pluralism as a threat and to invest liberal norms with exclusionary content.

With this comparative evidence, we advance the existing literature in three key ways: first, by demonstrating empirically how civilizational populism mobilizes religion as a boundary-making device beyond doctrinal content; second, by highlighting the flexible adaptation of far-right discourse to local religious or secular registers; and third, by proposing a comparative framework for tracing how the grammar of anti-Muslim exclusion circulates across national contexts. In practical terms, the study underscores the urgency of confronting the normalization of exclusionary narratives, not only for the status, rights, and social acceptance of Muslim communities, but for the democratic fabric of European societies as a whole.

Nonetheless, our analysis is not without limitations. Focusing on political and media discourses in three countries, it does not include systematic fieldwork among affected communities or fully address the algorithmic dynamics of digital polarization, both of which are crucial for grasping the lived realities and transmission of exclusionary frames. Expanding future research to additional cases, and to the digital and everyday-life dimensions of religious populism, remains an important agenda.

Ultimately, by showing how civilizational Christianity can be instrumentalized across diverse settings to harden boundaries and reframe the language of liberal democracy, this article calls for renewed critical vigilance: not all appeals to tradition or tolerance serve inclusive ends. Understanding and contesting the evolving interplay of religion, migration, and far-right mobilization will be essential for safeguarding pluralism and democratic norms in contemporary Europe.