Toleration on Trial

Toleration on Trial offers the only multidisciplinary study available on the issue of toleration, in the context of deep and difficult conflicts over ideological, cultural, and identity issues in today's mobilized political environment. The importance of individual attitudes and institutional/cultural arrangements is explored as a central axis in the meaning of toleration as a principle and practically in relation to demands for toleration of religious expression, gay rights, and the Islamic sources of toleration.

Toleration on Trial offers the only multidisciplinary study available on the issue of toleration, bringing together political psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, Islamic scholars, and political theorists to examine the most pressing debates in the field. The volume addresses the toleration question from a number of angles: toleration and its application to gay rights; Islam and toleration; institutional, ideological, and psychological preconditions for its practice; and philosophical and conceptual arguments for the principle of toleration.

The common thread running throughout the volume is the core question: Is toleration primarily a product of institutional arrangements, or is it an attitude of individuals? To answer this adequately, the authors believe that a contemporary analysis of the possibility, significance and requirements of toleration must be fully cognizant of the democratic, or more accurately—politically mobilized—background in which toleration becomes a difficult issue. Conflicts between deeply divided groups within nations and between groups across political boundaries pose the issue of threat and risk to a practice or way of life that many peoples find difficult to accept.

Can the idea and practice of toleration manage these in politically and ethically defensible ways? These essays address various aspects of the aim to establish or strengthen toleration among politically mobilized groups, in a context of contemporary democratic challenges.

Chapter 1 Table of Contents
Chapter 2 Preface
Chapter 3 Acknowledgements
Chapter 4 Biographies of the Authors
Chapter 5 Introduction
Part 6 I Conceptualizing Toleration
Chapter 7 1 The Limits of Toleration
Chapter 8 2 Institutionalizing Toleration
Chapter 9 3 Toleration and Self-Skepticism
Chapter 10 Commentary: Liberal Toleration, Recognition, and Same-Sex Marriage: A Response to Richard Dees and Elisabetta Galeotti
Chapter 10 Commentary: Tolerant Institutions
Part 12 II Toleration and Sexuality
Chapter 13 4 Of Socinians and Homosexuals: Trust and the LImits of Toleration
Chapter 14 5 Toleration as Recognition: The Case for Same-Sex Marriage
Part 15 III Toleration and Religion
Chapter 16 6 Tropes and Challenges of Islamic Toleration
Chapter 17 7 Toleration in a Modern Islamic Polity: Contemporary Islamist Views
Chapter 17 9 The Authoritarian Dynamic: Racial, Political, and Moral Intolerance Under Conditions of Societal Threat
Chapter 19 8 Reason, Tradition, and Authority: Religion and the Indian State
Chapter 20 Commentary: Muslim Societies, Muslim Minorities
Part 21 IV Toleration and Psychology
Chapter 22 10 Is Intolerance Incorrigible? An Analysis of Change Among Russians
Chapter 23 Commentary: Institutions, Individuals, and the Sources of Toleration