Challenges of the contemporary democratic state

The beginning of the 21st century has seen the growth of religious fundamentalism all over the planet. This fundamentalist wave has stood out on the international stage as a promoter of various conflicts and its most frightening face is mass and catastrophic transnational terrorism. Property and people are destroyed and killed indiscriminately in all parts of the world, in an unacceptable disregard for human rights, in the name of revenge legitimised by fanaticism. The reaction to terrorism, in turn, has also acquired the irrational character of a new crusade that jeopardises the world economy and civil rights. The aims of this research were to question the role of the democratic state in the face of this challenge, to critique the reaction of democratic states to religious fundamentalism and fundamentalism, to analyse how fundamental rights and guarantees have been affected in this process, to debate the possibilities of intercultural dialogue in a world marked by cultural pluralism and to discuss the proposal of intercultural philosophy for the construction of a planetary ethic.