Religion and the Far Right in Today’s Europe Analyzing the relationship of religion with the far right in today’s Europe requires a deep knowledge of the history of religion and politics in Europe. Ignorance of this history is one major cause of the numerous superficial, biased, and flawed comments appearing on Internet sites and in printed sources about religion and what are called extremist movements. Hence the need for detailed historical explanations in this paper. Certain religious-based movements, particularly Islamic movements, are described now as extremist. The terms extremism or extremist have become catch-all terms to describe a wide variety of political ideologies and movements. Thanks to the concept of a political spectrum running from right to left, one can use the term extremist to describe anybody at the extreme end of the spectrum on right or left—in other words, further to the right of mainstream right or further to the left of conventional left. The term extremist is used simply to describe anybody or any grouping who has rejected conventional or mainstream beliefs and ideologies. Use of a qualifying adjective indicates the general emphasis of the extremism. Thus, one can have, for example, far right extremism or right-wing extremism; far left extremism or left-wing extremism; religious extremism; violent extremism; non-violent extremism. The terms left-wing extremism or far left extremism generally refer to parties and movements such as Trotskyists, Maoists, and anarchists to the left of Communist parties. When it comes to examining religious extremism, the religious tendency most described by the term extremism is invariably Islamic or Islamist extremism; sometimes, the terms Islamist, jihadist, Islamic fundamentalist, Islamism, militant Islam or Islamo-fascist are used to denote Islamic extremism. Use of the terms Islamo-fascism and Islamo-fascist is not really a breakthrough—as some may think-- in trying to describe the coming together of religion and fascism. The term clerical-fascist was used in the 1930s to describe far right Christian parties that were open-ended toward Fascism and National Socialism. The same attempt to “marry” religion and fascism happens when people describe Hindutva—a politicized Hindu movement in India—as Hindu Fascism. Some sources regard certain religious movements as part of the far right while others consider religious movements a separate category of religious extremism. Most Internet terms on religious extremism are directed against certain Muslim movements and include: Islamic fundamentalist; Islamism; Islamist; Islamo-fascist; Jihadist. Terms such as religious fundamentalism and religious right work better for finding materials on far right movements in the United States particularly since Europe does not have the mass base of Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals who support far right movements in the United States. Library subject headings for religious fundamentalism include: Fundamentalism (this applies to Christianity) Hindutva