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Freedom of religion is the individual's right or freedom to hold whatever religious beliefs he or she wishes, or none at all. This freedom extends mere freedom of thought by adding the freedom of worship and the freedom of religious congregation, and has become regarded in the 20th century as one of the basic human rights.
Most importantly, the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) affirms the freedom to change religions.
The struggle to reach that point in the aftermath of World War II was a Christian struggle, more specifically a non-Christian ethical and philosophical struggle within a largely Christian society. Conversely, freedom of religion was the normal rule in Antiquity, where a syncretic point-of-view identified strange deities as foreigners' acceptable conceptions of more familiar gods. A community of traders could expect to be autonomous in a city under their own laws, with freedom to worship their own gods. When the street mobs of separate quarters clashed in a Hellenistic or Roman city, the issue was generally a perceived infringement of some community's rights. The Greek-Jewish clashes at Cyrene provide a disastrous example, but all the cosmopolitan cities were the scene of tumults.
Some of the historical exceptions have been in regions where one of the revealed religions has been in a position of power: Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Others have been where the established order has felt threatened, as shown in the trial of Socrates or where the ruler has been deified, as in Rome or the Persian empire, and refusal to offer token sacrifice was similar to refusing to take an oath of allegiance. This was the core for resentment and the persecution of early Christian communities.
Freedom of religion in India was encapsulated in an inscription of Asoka:
During history some countries have accepted some form of freedom of religion, though in actual practice that theoretical freedom was delimited through punitive taxation, repressive social legislation and political disenfranchisement. Compare examples of individual freedom in PolandThe Republic of Poland a country in Central Europe, lies between Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, and the Baltic Sea, Lithuania and Russia (in the form of the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave) t or the MuslimA Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam. The word Muslim means one who submits and implies complete submission to the will of God ( Allah). Muslims believe that nature is itself Islamic, since it follows natural laws placed by God. Thus, a Muslim s tradition of dhimmiA Dhimmi or Zimmi (Arabic ), as defined in classical Islamic legal and political literature, is a person living in a Muslim state who is a member of an officially tolerated non-Muslim religion. The term literally means "protected person. Etymology The roos, literally "protected individuals" professing an officially tolerated non-Muslim religion. In Islam the proscribed punishment for apostasy is death. These protections, being highly selective and advanced to communities rather than individual, could also be withdrawn. They were examples of the ruler's beneficence, not inalienable rights.
In most parts of European society there was no individual freedom of religion from the suppression of non-Christian worship with the Theodosian decreesFlavius Theodosius (Cauca [Coca-Segovia], Spain ca 346 Milan, January 17, 395), also called Theodosius I and Theodosius the Great was a Roman emperor. He was the son of a senior military officer, Theodosius the Elder. Theodosius was, briefly, the last rul of 391 AD, under the influence of Ambrose of Milan until the Enlightenment of the 18th century17th century 18th century 19th century more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701- 1800; however, historians will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th Century as 1715- 89,. Even 16th century edicts of toleration (Augsburg, Nantes) left little room for individual freedom of conscience, under the principle of cuius regio eius religio ("to each region, its own religion"), and did not extend toleration to small powerless minorities, like Anabaptists.