On Tolerance

Tolerance as a concept entered our literature particularly after the 1990s. Following the collapse of totalitarian and imperious political regimes, it was suggested that everyone should be tolerant toward each other. It must have come as an attractive and handy concept to us, as some religious communities, particularly Fethullah Gülen Hocaefendi, used it extensively for some time. Now, it seems to have lost its previous luster.

A closer examination of the objections raised against this emphasis on tolerance reveals some merits. In the final analysis, if you tolerate someone, you are tolerating some of his/her acts or behaviors that are not essentially righteous or correct. In a sense, you say to him/her: "What you did was not quite right, but may well be tolerated." The critics went one step further to argue that tolerance in fact is nothing but a sort of contempt.

Basically, we can say that tolerance is normative and has entered into our agenda as part of our modernism. Tolerating what the "other" does. Yes, but what is our real attitude toward the other while we tolerate his/her actions that we do not actually endorse? For some, this is "indifference." Yet, this still does not hold true. This is because we closely monitor the person whom we tolerate, assessing how s/he performs with respect to the limits we set. If s/he moves closer to these limits as if to breach them, then the limits of our tolerance toward him or her will also be tested. This person whose actions we do not approve of may do whatever s/he does as long as s/he is not a nuisance to others. In other words, when s/he oversteps the mark, we intend to interfere in his/her affairs to make sure s/he remains within the confines of tolerance. Here, we can talk about some sort of a hegemonic relation.

Tolerance is just one concept from the arsenal of the modern world. Pluralism is another such concept. Pluralism may sound appealing or necessary to many of us, but if we, Muslims, fail to use it in its crude form as imported from the West and without reconstructing its semantics based on the divine revelation, then we start to advocate absolute relativism. It is perhaps for this reason that we should use "diversity" in place of "pluralism."

Throughout the history of mankind, all fundamental questions have been asked and answered by religions. For religions, life itself is miraculous and man is the architect of life. The Enlightenment, in essence, not a complete break with religion, but a complex of relations that man tries to established without help from religion. In this regard, tolerance as preached by the Enlightenment, in particular with regard to religions, is a sort of patience.

The modern nation-state delineates the limits of the religious realm and expects religions to withdraw to the private sphere and accept relativism and stop resisting the marginalization process. In trying to pass judgment about religions within the scope of tolerance, some scholars argue that Judaism lacks a mission. This is true since it belongs to a special nation and Jehovah is the God of the sons of Israel. Islam is the only religion that preaches tolerance based on its faith. Indeed, even at times when it was in power, it recognized ample rights to life and freedoms for non-Muslims. Christianity, on the other hand, can be tolerant only when it does not rule.

From here, we can move to another interesting concept: Christian city or Islamic city. A Christian city implies one where practitioners of other religions are banished and lifestyles and architecture and other spheres have been completely Christianized. Identification of a city with a single religion may even manifest itself in the form of identification with a single sect. For instance, in the formation of the Swiss cantons, the principle of "one territory for one sect" was adopted. After long years of wars among sects, people sought to find a formula on which everyone could agree and finally decided that the people should choose either to adopt the sect of the prince of the canton or move to another canton where a prince with the sect s/he chooses is in power. In a Christian city, there was no tolerance. When the Enlightenment dethroned religion, the issue of tolerating foreigners with different religions and cultures emerged. Europe is gradually forgetting about multiculturalism and has not been able find a satisfactory solution to this problem.

In the past and today, we do not come across Islamic cities where non-Muslims are isolated or their religious or historical places destroyed. Yes, but have non-Muslims found tolerance in the Islamic city? Yes. But in the modern Turkish Republic, the practice was reversed. Non-Muslims have been isolated, and they have found no tolerance.