The Pseudo-Paradox of Toleration

I was goaded into writing this by a discussion of pluralism in mathematics by a philosopher I will not name because it would make you think ill of them.

The so-called `paradox of toleration’ is that the tolerant must tolerate the intolerant, who will therefore take over and install Sharia Law, burkas, compulsory short beards, take away votes for women and leave the sewers to fall apart in a decade...

Nobody could take this paradox seriously, yet some people do. It relies accepting the claim that to be tolerant means you have to tolerate anything and everything.

That’s not what tolerance means. ‘Religious tolerance’ means that the State does not actively stop people worshiping the God of their understanding in the manner their sect prescribes - within the limits of civil and criminal law (so no live sacrifices).

We don’t have laws on what cuisines can and can’t be served in this country, except for dog, cat and a few other Chinese delicacies, and that’s `culinary tolerance’ or something similar.

We do have laws against killing people, swindling them, assaulting or harming them, and various other things. We don’t tolerate that. If you think you can kill your daughter for making eyes at the wrong man, do it outside our borders or we will lock you up. Usually, even the grossly intolerant want laws about those things, involving steeper punishments, so there’s no clash.

And liberals, of course, don’t tolerate all sorts of things, but mostly a) anyone who disagrees with them, b) right-wing ideas and movements, c) nationalism and strict immigration controls. Except that doesn’t count as `intolerance’ because those are bad ideas and bad people and so outside the scope of tolerance. Tolerance is only for the good, if you’re a liberal.

Here’s a quote from a site about Islam, which to judge from what it says, is pro-Islamic.

...the reality is that Islam is meant to be a complete way of life for its followers. It includes a complete and logical set of beliefs, rituals, and a moral code that covers every action that a Muslim takes in their life.

Every action. Everything matters. Whether you swallow what you pick from between your teeth, or spit it out: that matters. When everything matters, there can be no tolerance.

Tolerance means that some things do not matter. What you wear on casual occasions, what you eat, what car you drive or even if you drive, how you style your hair, what church you go to, if your marriage partner is the same sex as you or different… these are things about which we have decided to be tolerant, in this country, and therefore do not matter to us, or at least, to the State.

What happens if the Sharia Law party gets started? The media choose the most rabid, least balanced spokesman and feed him questions intended to make it clear that women are going to have a hard time under SP rule, and it won’t be obvious how we will have a replacement generation of engineers when only rote-learned Koran is taught in schools. Nobody argues, nobody discusses, they just let him rant on. What nobody does is engage or argue, because that would suggest these might after all be reasonable people. Since they are their own worst enemy, and most extremists are, they can be relied on to do sabotage themselves.

Tolerance does not mean we have to make the intolerant look good or give way to their ideas and policies: it means we don’t lock them up for speaking. As long as we don’t do that, we can tell them to go hike on all the other stuff.