Tolerance

The arguments over the Islamic community center in New York have been frustrating, but they have given me the opportunity to think about what we are talking about when we talk about religious tolerance.

Tolerance is a fine ideal, but I think it sets the bar too low. We “tolerate” a crying baby on an airplane. We should try to sincerely RESPECT religious traditions, not just when it is fashionable to do so, and not out of a desire to feel More Multi-Cultural Than Thou.

Part of that respect means engaging in thoughtful, critical appraisals of the tenants of those traditions (and their countless permutations – those distinctions matter!) Patting people on the head and saying “Whatever beliefs make you happy are just swell with me, sport!” is not respect. That’s condescending bullshit. I’m not saying we all have to be Christopher Hitchens (I did say “thoughtful, critical” appraisals) but we don’t really respect these traditions if we don’t find them worthy of inquiry. For an example of what this respect might look like, we can turn to Islamic doctrine. One of the things about Islam that is so remarkable to me (even if it is an accident of chronology) is the way other faiths (well, the two other Abrahamic faiths, anyway) are deemed important and worthy of respect. That being said, Islamic doctrine is intellectually honest enough to temper that respect with the firm belief that (for example) the divinity of Christ is incorrect, perhaps even blasphemous. In that act of thoughtfully disagreeing, Islam is a million times more respectful than, say, the nebulous openness of Unitarian Universalists. (Sorry, UUs!)

We can think of the phrase “I respectfully disagree” as having an all-too-apt mirror-image: “I disrespectfully agree.”