Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

yossi nehushtan

Religion and the Limits of Liberal Tolerance

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ABSTRACT

I would like to put forward three main arguments and one conclusion regarding the proper way of treating religion in a tolerant-liberal democracy.

The First argument is actually a preliminary conceptual note:

Tolerance is to be understood as not harming the other although the tolerant person thinks there are good reasons for harming the other because (a) the other’s values which may find expression in his behaviour, way of life or speech are viewed to the tolerant person as ‘wrong’, i.e. dangerous, evil, immoral, unjust, useless, irrational and so forth, or (b) because the other’s personal characteristics (colour of skin, sex, manners, physical appearance, physical disability and so forth) seem to the tolerant person to be repulsive or disgusting, or these characteristics imply the other’s inferiority in the eyes of the tolerant.

Second, the limit of tolerance is intolerance i.e. intolerance should not be tolerated, according to the principles of reciprocity and proportionality. The former explains why intolerance should not be tolerated whereas the latter prescribes how and to what extent it should not be tolerated.

The cumulative effect of these principles is that apart from extremely rare occasions, intolerance should not be tolerated at all times. 

Third, Religion, namely monotheistic, ethnic or communal one is by its nature a system of intolerant values. This is so because these kinds of religions (and in a way – many others) share, to various degrees, the following typical characteristics. First, they seek to ensure the existence of the community as a separate and unified organ. Second, they wish to gain earthly, physical domination over believers and heretics alike. Third, they tend to classify tradition, costumes and symbols as sacred therefore generally unquestionable and beyond criticism. Fourth, they strive to achieve total control over a wide range of aspects of life. Fifth, they identify morality and law with the divine, hence not subject to human criticism and reform. They have a mere perception of the “truth” which does not tolerate disagreements. Last but not least, they are by their nature or at the very least by their common practice, intolerant towards the other: towards those who believe in the “wrong” religion, heretics, women, homosexuals and so on. Indeed, empirical research constantly shows that, on the whole, the more a person is religiously devoted the more he is to be intolerant towards the other and the less he is to support human rights in general and (unsurprisingly) in particular those human rights that might interfere with religious freedom or harm religious values.

The cumulative effect of the above arguments leads to the conclusion that religion as such and above all religious intolerance, should not be tolerated – in a proportionate manner – in what may be called a tolerant-liberal democracy which is different from the liberal-neutral, the liberal-pluralistic and the liberal-multicultural ones.

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Yossi Nehushtan is a Lecturer in Law at Balliol College , University of Oxford . He gained his LLB from the College of Management , Israel ; his LLM from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his BCL and MPhil from the University of Oxford . He is now reading for the DPhil (in law) at the University of Oxford .