While interviewed on a pro-government television channel in Hungary on November 3, 2017, Fidesz parliamentary delegation leader Gergely Gulyás declared that “there will be no mosques in Hungary”, and added that “from the perspective of our own security, mosques would have a negative impact”. 

Gulyás was speaking to government propagandist Zsolt Bayer, a founding member of governing Fidesz party known for making offensive and racist statements and comments. During the TV show, Bayer said that “the problem is that now you almost have to say with boring grayness that, of course, Islamist, Jihadist, Islamic State, when did he get there, where was he radicalized…We know that next week, in two weeks, in a month, it’s going to happen again somewhere. We know this, but still nothing is happening.”
Then Gulyas answered "“Western Europe has not done anything against this danger…Wherever radical Islam raises its head and is allowed to take root, these kinds of acts can occur at any moment.” This is the moment where Bayer said “Wherever there’s a mosque, there’s a problem”, and Gulyas added: “That’s right. There will be no mosques in Hungary…There is such an initiative. We can’t change our position on this.”

 

Today in Budapest, several hundreds of Scientologists gathered peacefully with candles before their Church in Budapest to protest what they called an outrageous and wholesale violation of the human rights of all Scientologists in the country. Indeed, today, 50 police officers of the National Investigation Office raided the Church of Scientology of Budapest and 17 Scientology missions in Hungary, saying that it was related to “a suspected misuse of personal information”.

Since 2012, when a widely-disputed law on churches and religious matters went into force, Hungary has been increasingly criticized by human rights institutions for its crackdown on religious minorities throughout the country. Even the European Courts of Human Rights determined in 2014 that the Hungarian Church Act (of 2012) violated the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and freedom of association protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. This decision became final by decision of the Grand Chamber of the European Court in September 2014.

Since that date, Hungary refused to abide by the decision, and increased its crackdown on religious minorities as Scientologists, as well as other non-Catholic Christian, Jewish and Muslim denominations and eastern religions, in disrespect of the human rights standards of the Council of Europe, the European Union and the OSCE.