Clashing Vulnerabilities? Revisiting Executief van de Moslims in België and Others v. Belgium with Vulnerability Theory

Jelle Creemers is a professor and the academic dean of religious studies at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit (ETF) in Leuven, Belgium.

The final judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Executief van de Moslims in België and Others v. Belgium (13 February 2024) could not have been more clear. The seven judges unanimously held that the Flemish and Walloon decrees banning ritual slaughter of animals without prior stunning did not constitute a violation of Article 9 (freedom of religion or belief) or of Article 14 (nondiscrimination), read in conjunction with Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This decision ended the appeal of several Belgian Muslim and Jewish organizations and individuals seeking a legal exemption that would allow them to slaughter animals according to their religious convictions. The ECtHR judgment prompted debate among, and critical feedback from, European FoRB experts.

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Religious Freedom and the Courts

James T. Richardson is Emeritus Foundation Professor of Sociology and Judicial Studies, University of Nevada, Reno.

This post is part of a series on the sociology of religious freedom.

A Sociology of Religious Freedom, coauthored by Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson, offers in part a sociological perspective on the theoretical underpinnings of the role played by the courts, especially in Western societies, in determining the meaning and implementation of religious freedom. It first explicates how and why this crucial role for the courts has evolved in recent decades and then explores specific trends and landmark cases in major judicial systems in the United States and in Western Europe, focusing on the role courts have played in the protection of religious freedom.

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Liberal and Post-liberal Religious Freedom in Church Employment: An Appraisal of the Strasbourg’s Case Law

Matteo Corsalini is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Siena (Italy), Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences. This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 6 October 2025.

In its first, 1993 decision on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), Kokkinakis v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) famously held that FoRB is “one of the most vital elements that go to make up the identity of believers and their conception of life” (para. 31). The Court further clarified that, beyond protecting traditionally religious concerns, FoRB is also “a precious asset for atheists, agnostics, skeptics and the unconcerned” and thus overall a “matter of individual conscience” (para. 31). By employing such phrasing, the ECtHR appeared to ground the rationale for FoRB protection in wider concerns of individual self-determination—including through adherence to multiple, and at times unconventional, religions, or even to none. In this sense the ECtHR may be said to have developed a “generally liberal approach”[1] to FoRB—an orientation that the Court has repeatedly exhibited since Kokkinakis. Building on this precedent, the Court has in fact underscored the primacy of individual self-expression in religious matters, clarifying that FoRB protection should also cover religiously inspired practices that are not explicitly mandated by religious authorities and official dogma (see Eweida & Others v. UK, para. 81). In other words, what matters for the protection of idiosyncratic religious practices—the Court has clarified—is assessing whether they attain a certain level of “cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance” for the individual believer only (see Bayatyan v. Armenia, para. 110).

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