Religions are important tools of wisdom. It is the reason why it looks necessary to consider the notion of tolerance. Christianity created in my opinion a revolution when it created respect about weakness. To this extend Jesus was one of the first feminists, allowed children to talk, talked to excluded people like the Samaritans… To this extend it is possible to say that religions had a great influence to promote freedom as, in the contrary, it was a powerful factor of oppression. In my opinion, the notion of interpretation is crucial in this context.
Judaism was an example of that. The idea of this religion is saying that God is making itself discreet, while allowing the chosen people to prepare the advent of the Messiah. To this extend Judaism was showing a God who, despite his powerfulness, allowed the weak and sinner human creature to express itself; and showed to this extend a great act of tolerance. However this notion was subject of interpretation, as showed for example the rivalry between the Talmudists Hillel and Chammaï. The first one was open to teach the Talmud to everyone, while the other was a lot more restrictive concerning that. It looks terrible and sad that Judaism, like most of the religions, is showing oppositions between moderate and conservatives. To this extend, in the Middle Ages, if Maimonide was creating bridges between theology and philosophy, Aboulafia was more focusing on the Kabbalah (the esoteric side of the texts) while he was considered to be one of the first hermeneuticians.
Christianism was as well a battleground concerning the notion of tolerance. In the Middle Ages the Church created the Inquisition to defeat the enemies of the Christians, and it created a great deal of atrocities. The Monk movements like the Benedictians or the Franciscans wanted to come back to the original message of the Christ. The Protestant movement was also a factor that interrogated this notion. The will to go back to the original antique sources (Luther said that the languages are were human knowledge is contained) and to go back to original message of the Christ, or Saint Paul concerning the importance of salvation by faith was for instance at the origine of a great movement of education of women. But the classical age was a great time of intolerance, with dreadful wars of religions. To this extend the appearance of laicity was in my opinion a very good solution, which has to be defended in today’s world.
Concerning Islam, we assist for some centuries in a progressive decline of this brilliant civilization. In the first centuries of its existence it contributed to mathematical, astronomical, philosophical… great contributions. Societies in Muslims empires were more tolerant than in Europe : Christian and Jews were tolerated. Moise Maimonide, for instance, wrote his works in a Spain dominated by the Muslims. But the last centuries led to a decadence, there were movements against scientific progress, and a lack of openness concerning philosophy for instance: the Muslim civilization followed a lot more Al Ghazali, who wrote against the influence of philosophy in theology, than Averroes who was advocating the contrary. It led to a decline that created in the long run the trauma of Aboukir battle, where the Napoleonian troops greatly defeated the Mameluks in Egypt, fighting with guns against swords. It became the symbol of the Western technological supremacy at this time. In my opinion, today’s Muslim countries want to go back to their great past civilizations, but are lacking the openness and innovative spirit in all areas of knowledge that they used to have and that led to this great age.
Those considerations are showing to which extend religion and tolerance are not necessarily compatible. In my opinion religion can be a great tool for or against tolerance. It all depends on how you use it. But defending the legacy of reformers, interpreters, creators of dialog and compromise… is a way of interpreting texts that is necessary to do, at least for believers.
The observer 