Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush\u2019s essay titled ‘Treatise on Tolerance’ is published in the 2004 Praemium Erasmianum Foundation publication. This essay is Translated from the Persian by Nilou Mobasser.<\/p>\n
You may order the booklet from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, and it will be sent to you free of charge.<\/p>\n
Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
\nJan van Goyenkade 5
\nNL – 1075 HN Amsterdam
\nT. ++ 31 20 6752 753
\nF. ++ 31 20 675 22 31
\nE. spe@erasmusprijs.org
\nwww.erasmusprijs.org<\/p>\n
First and foremost, I would like to pay tribute to the soul of Erasmus, who was the Notes<\/strong> Copyright<\/strong> Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush\u2019s essay titled ‘Treatise on Tolerance’ is published in the 2004 Praemium Erasmianum Foundation publication. This essay is Translated from the Persian by Nilou Mobasser. You may order the booklet from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, and it will be sent to you free of charge. Praemium Erasmianum Foundation Jan van Goyenkade 5 NL […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drsoroush.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nmaster of tolerance and pluralism. Next, I would like to thank the board of the
\nErasmus Prize Foundation which selected me as one of the three winners of the
\nFoundation\u2019s 2004 award. I commend their record of cultural and humanitarian
\nservice and wish them ever greater success in this endeavor.
\nI have no first hand information about the criteria that were used to select this year\u2019s
\nwinners, but I suspect that, in the selection of an Iranian Shi\u2019i Muslim such as myself,
\nthe book Tolerance and Governance and, perhaps, the tale of its publication, were
\nsignificant in the eyes of the boardmembers of the Erasmus Prize Foundation. As its
\ntitle suggests, the book tries to present democracy as a way of governance that is
\nbased on tolerance, and to persuade the post-revolution Muslim community of Iran
\nthat it is possible for them both to safeguard their Muslim values and norms and to
\nlive in a democratic system; that they need not acquire one at the cost of the other.
\nNot only tolerance, but also criticizing officials and holding them to account are
\nreligious values, and both these notions are firm pillars of democracy. The points that
\nneed greater emphasis at this juncture are giving precedence to rights over duties and
\nsubstituting interpretive pluralism for an interpretive monopoly or the official
\ninterpretation of religion by rulers.
\nAt any rate, the book was being put forward for publication at a time (1995) when
\nIran was experiencing its most severe period of political asphyxiation since the
\nrevolution. The book\u2019s author had been forced to leave the country, having been
\nsubjected to savage, physical assaults at universities and public venues, as well as
\nfierce attacks by newspapers. He had lost his job and security and \u2013 far away from his
\nfamily \u2013 spent his time fleeing from country to country (Germany, Britain, Canada).
\nThe Culture Ministry had fallen into the hands of a minister who harked from the
\nranks of extremist conservatives; a minister who would not allow the publication of
\nthe slightest shred of \u2018un-Islamic\u2019 material. The newspaper and book market was
\nundergoing an unparalleled slump, and no-one was being given the chance to defend
\nhimself against the insults and calumnies directed at him. My students had also been
\nbanned from writing or explaining anything. In these oppressive conditions, one of
\nmy audacious students and friends (who is now serving a six years prison term
\nbecause of his courage in revealing the secrets behind the killing of a number of
\nwriters) had the courage to push through the publication of my book, Tolerance and
\nGovernance. However, the book did not contain only pieces written by me. It was a
\ncollection of my writings and scholarly critiques of them that had appeared in various
\npublications. This approach was in itself almost unprecedented in the history of Iran\u2019s
\nbook industry, but a subsequent development was to make it truly unprecedented. The
\namazing development was that the Culture Ministry was preventing the publication of
\nthe book as it stood and that it high-handedly added to the book a long critical piece
\nwritten by one of the agents behind the regime\u2019s policy of cultural repression who
\nhappened to be a leading member of the Ansar-e Hezbollah vigilante group. The book
\nnow bears within it that unwanted article like an illegitimate child. And the bittersweet
\nirony of it all is that this illegitimate element has become the cause of the
\nbook\u2019s legitimacy!
\nYou can see that the book is not only entitled Tolerance and Governance, it is the
\nliving embodiment of it.
\nBut setting aside these introductory remarks, tolerance, which we are in great need
\nof in Iran today, is not by any means alien to our Iranian culture and Islamic creed. I
\npropose to show this in the works of two great poet\/thinkers of Iran. Hafez, the
\nrenowned Iranian poet of the eighth\/fourteenth century exalted tolerance to the point
\nof saying: In these two expressions lies peace in this world and the next \/ With
\nfriends, magnanimity; with enemies, tolerance.
\nHafez penned these words at a time when a century had passed since the Mongol
\ninvasion of Iran and, with the horror and distress of that invasion still etched on their
\nminds, Iranians were struck by the Timurid thunderbolt. The flames of insecurity,
\ninjustice and destruction seared the land, and not only were local rulers and politicians
\nincapable of tolerating one another, but religious and sectarian leaders too were
\nengaged in unending feuds, each one of them considering the others to have been
\nduped by Satan and destined for hell. In Hafez\u2019s words, \u2018the orb was in a grim
\ntemper\u2019 and society in need of \u2018a sage proposition\u2019. The sage proposition, which
\ncould provide felicity and peace both in this world and the next, was, to Hafez\u2019s mind,
\nnothing other than the two noble and lofty notions of magnanimity and tolerance; the
\nfirst, towards friends and, the second, toward enemies. Of course,
\nif I were in Hafez\u2019s place, I would add a concluding phrase to his verse as follows:
\nwith friends, magnanimity; with enemies, tolerance, but not with the enemies of
\ntolerance!
\nHafez knew well that, in a religious society, inviting people to exercise tolerance
\nwould fail to have any impact or captivate hearts unless it was accompanied by an
\ninsightful theory of human nature and religion. This is why he astutely tried
\nthroughout his works to use the language of poetry and allusion to elucidate a theory
\nof this kind and to persuade his audience that his recommendation was not just a case
\nof well-intentioned sermonizing but that magnanimity and tolerance were sound
\nphilosophical notions that rested on solid foundations.
\nHuman fallibility, both in the realm of theory and in the realm of practice, was
\nsomething that was never far from Hafez\u2019s mind and he tried to utilize religious
\nmythology to highlight it and lay it bare. According to Islamic accounts,
\nthe presence of human beings on earth was the result of two original sins; one,
\ncommitted by Satan and, the other, committed by Adam. God commanded all the
\nangels to bow down before Adam. Only Satan disobeyed and his punishment was that
\nhe was banished by God. Then, he had the opportunity until the end of time to deceive
\nand lead astray Adam\u2019s offspring and to try to lure them away from God. (This myth
\ndoes not appear in the same form in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.)
\nThe second sin was that, tempted by Satan, Adam ate the forbidden fruit. No sooner
\nhad he tasted the fruit than he became aware of his own nakedness and sexuality. The
\npun-ishment for this sin was that Adam and Eve were banished from heaven and
\ndescended to earth, where they married and became the founders of humankind and
\nhuman history.
\nOn Hafez\u2019s reading, then, individual human beings, who are the products of sin and
\nare never immune from Satan\u2019s temptations, can neither stake a claim to infallibility
\nthemselves nor treat harshly others who err and expect them to behave like angels.
\nNone of these things are compatible with human nature and the genesis of human
\nexistence. Hafez expresses this idea in the most gracious terms: Who are we to
\nprofess innocence? \/ When saintly Adam was stung by sin.
\nAs far as Hafez is concerned, sin is a defining, ineluctable feature of human nature
\nand conduct. And intelligent people must take it into account in their conception of
\nthe world and human life. They must not disregard its vital role for the sake of its
\nmoral reprehensibility. Perhaps when Mandeville, the Dutch-born English physician,
\nwrote his The Fable of the Bees and equated individual vice with collective virtue, he
\nhad something along these same lines in mind.
\nBe that as it may, Hafez goes even further than this and, in one of his works,
\nqualifies human beings with the two adjectives
\n\u2018somnolent\u2019 and \u2018wine-tainted\u2019. The former attribute regards theoretical
\nfallibility and, the latter, practical transgressions. (Bear in mind that, in Islamic law,
\ndrinking wine is considered a sin.) It is as if to say, we human beings see truths with
\nhalf-open eyes or in a dream-like state; hence, we do not have a totally clear
\nconception of them. No one possesses the truth, because everyone is somnolent. And
\nno one has absolute vision; hence, no one can call others blind and treat them with
\nviolence. We are all half-blind, half-aware creatures and we have to lend one another
\na hand. The practical outcome that emerges from this image is not discourteousness
\nand intolerance, but tolerance and patience; and not just with friends but also with
\nenemies, because we are all human beings; we are all somnolent and wine-tainted.
\nEven more explicit and precise conclusions can be drawn from this mythology-based
\nreading: Truth and religiosity must never be used as weapons. For they are of the
\nnature of language, not claws. Rather than encouraging arrogance and imperiousness,
\nthey should foster humility and forbearance. Someone who is closer to the truth is
\nmore humble and more tolerant towards others than someone who is self-righteous in
\nthe delusion of possessing the truth and imagines that everyone else is deprived and
\nout of luck. This is a kind of mild and moderate Erasmian form of doubt, which
\nunderpins modern thinking and logically bears within it a call to tolerance.
\nHere, I would like to cite Karl Popper\u2019s exact words about Erasmus and Socrates
\nand their epistemological moderateness and its link to tolerance and magnanimity, in
\norder to demonstrate the affinity between the ideas of eastern and western
\nphilosophers in this respect.
\nErasmus of Rotterdam attempted to revive this Socratic doctrine \u2013
\nthe important though unobtrusive doctrine \u2018Know thyself and thus admit to thyself
\nhow little thou knowest!\u2019 Yet this doctrine was swept away by the belief that truth is
\nmanifest and by the new self-assurance exemplified and taught in different ways by
\nLuther and Calvin, by Bacon and Descartes.
\nIt is important to realize, in this connection, the difference between Cartesian doubt
\nand the doubt of Socrates or Erasmus or Montaigne. While Socrates doubts human
\nknowledge or wisdom and remains firm in his rejection of any pretension to
\nknowledge or wisdom, Descartes doubts everything \u2013 but only to end up with the
\npossession of absolutely certain knowledge; for he finds that his universal doubt
\nwould lead him to doubt the truthfulness of God, which is absurd. Having proved that
\nuniversal doubt is absurd, he concludes that we can know securely, that we can be
\nwise \u2013 by distinguishing, in the natural light of reason, between clear and distinct
\nideas whose source is God and all other ideas whose source is our own impure
\nimagination. Cartesian doubt, we see, is merely a maieutic instrument for establishing
\na criterion of truth and, with it, a way to secure knowledge and wisdom. Yet for the
\nSocrates of the Apology, wisdom consisted in the awareness of our limitations; in
\nknowing how little we know, every one of us.
\nIt was this doctrine of an essential human fallibility which Nicolas of Cusa and
\nErasmus of Rotterdam (who refers to Socrates) revived; and it was this \u2018humanist\u2019
\ndoctrine (in contradistinction to the optimistic doctrine on which Milton relied, the
\ndoctrine that truth will prevail) which Nicolas and Erasmus, Montaigne and Locke
\nand Voltaire, followed by John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, made the basis of the
\ndoctrine of tolerance. \u2018What is tolerance?\u2019 asks Voltaire in his Philosophical
\nDictionary; and he answers: \u2018It is a necessary consequence of our humanity. We are
\nall fallible and prone to error; let us then pardon each other\u2019s folly. This is the first
\nprinciple of natural right.\u2019(1)
\nHafez even drew on the troubling notion of determinism (predestination, fatalism) to
\nreinforce his tolerance-inclined thinking. He says, we are all prisoners of destiny; a
\nMuslim person is Muslim by virtue of geography and history, just as a Christian is a
\nChristian on the same grounds. If Iranians were born in the Netherlands and the Dutch
\nin Iran, then the latter would be Muslims and the former, Christians. How, then, can
\nwe prisoners of history and geography put on airs and graces and claim to be superior
\nto others, or, even worse, resort to weapons and wage war on one another and shed
\nother people\u2019s blood? Prisons always make people humble and prisoners are kinder to
\none another in the light of their shared fate. We are the prisoners of our history,
\ngeography, learning and beliefs and, once the veils have fallen away, we will see with
\nwhat fallacies and superstitions we were afflicted.
\nIn the correspondence between Luther and Erasmus, as well as in Erasmus\u2019 book
\nDiscourse on Free Will, we repeatedly encounter the tale of human will versus God\u2019s
\nwill. This is a conundrum that all scholars and thinkers, especially religious ones,
\ngrappled with in the past. They sought to explain what role is left to human beings if
\nGod\u2019s will determines all affairs; or, if human beings do have some independence,
\nwhere the boundaries of God\u2019s will lie. And, as we know, it was this same delineation
\nand definition of the extent of God\u2019s will that ultimately opened the way for
\nphilosophical secularism, one of the legitimate offspring of which was political
\nsecularism.
\nErasmus\u2019 final verdict was that people who had been baptized were more likely to
\nbenefit from God\u2019s grace than people who had not been baptized, and that Gabriel,
\ntoo, was more likely to receive people who had been chosen by God beforehand. In
\nother words, for Erasmus, too, people who had happened to be born Christians and
\nhad happened to have been baptized were more favoured by and closer to God.
\nHafez, too, who lived in a religious society filled with Sufi sentiments, whilst being
\na serious critic of this society, concurred with a determinist position of this kind and
\nwrote unequivocally: Rob me not of hope in eternal grace \/ How can you know who is
\ntruly favoured and who disgraced ? \/ Not only I happened to lose piety \/ My Father
\nalso opted for losing the eternal heaven. In other words, at one and the same time, he
\naccepted his fallibility as a descendent of Adam and did not accept that transgression
\nand sin removed the possibility of benefiting from God\u2019s mercy and grace. He was of
\nthe view that good people and bad people had it inscribed in a book from time
\nimmemorial that they would lead a life of felicity or villainy.
\nAnd even more delicately and profoundly, he wrote: Are the chaste and the unchaste
\nnot both from the same tribe? \/ Which one do I choose to fall for? What choice? In
\nother words, when the saint and the sinner are in the same position in terms of their
\ndivinely-decreed destinies, which one do we freely choose?
\nIs it meaningful to speak of choice and will?
\nWe can see what dubious underpinnings Hafez is prepared to call upon to bolster his
\ncorrect belief in tolerance. And, to borrow an analogy from Mowlana Jalal-al-Din
\nRumi, we can see how he turns dust into gold with the magic of his words in order to
\nempower and enrich society with the resulting treasures.
\nFrom this panoply of views, epistemological doubt or a belief in half-open eyes is
\nthe most important and the most acceptable. Let us turn to the great Rumi, who lived a
\ncentury before Hafez. He came from Balkh (in modern-day Afghanistan) and his
\ntravels took him to Iran, Iraq and Hijaz. Finally, he came to reside in Konya (in
\nmodern-day Turkey) and was buried there. But his teachings captivated the entire
\nIslamic world \u2013 and, in our times, also enraptured the West \u2013 and were an inspiration
\nto all ardent hearts and all lovers of God. In order to demonstrate the extent to which
\nhuman knowledge is incomplete and relative, he recounts an Indian fable to us in
\nverse. The Indians had put an elephant on display. The elephant was in a dark
\nchamber and, in order to see it, the people had to file past it through the darkness. But,
\nsince they could not see in the dark, they would try to feel the elephant with their
\nhands. On leaving the chamber, they would tell others about their experience. The
\nones whose hands had touched the elephant\u2019s feet would say, I saw a \u2018column\u2019. The
\nones whose hands had touched the elephant\u2019s back would say, I saw a \u2018plank\u2019. The
\nones whose hands had touched its trunk would say, I saw a \u2018pipe\u2019, and so on.
\nRumi tells us that, if these people had had candles in their hands, their differences
\nwould have disappeared. But, alas, in the dark chamber of nature, our knowledge of
\nthe truth (which is symbolized by the elephant) is fragmented. We each hold a portion
\nof the truth in our hands and no one has all of it (apart from, he believed, mystics,
\nwho possess special, kohl-lined eyes). This admission of the deficiency of knowledge
\nis enough to make us more humble, and patience and tolerance are nothing other than
\none of the fruits of the tree of humility.
\nRumi said even more exquisite things and I have no doubt that, if Erasmus had known
\nabout them, he would have drawn on them and made excellent use of them in his
\nwritings. Rumi held that prophets played two major roles: teacher and healer. And he
\neven attached more importance to their role as healers than as teachers. Prophets and
\nreligions have come to human beings mainly to cultivate their spirits and to heal their
\nsouls; not to fill their minds with learning, but to fill their hearts with the love of God
\nand love for one another, and to cleanse them of sickness and hatred. The mind, too,
\nwhen liberated from vice, can find its way more nimbly into the hidden chamber of
\nthe world\u2019s secrets; a mind that is in chains is heavy-footed and a prisoner of nature.
\nRumi counselled theologians that God had given them reason purely so that they
\ncould use it to recognize the truth and He had sent religion purely so that they could
\nworship the Creator; woe betide them if they used it to other ends and for other
\npurposes! The mind is like a cane in the hands of the blind, not a weapon in the hands
\nof antagonists with which they can beat each other: When the cane becomes an
\ninstrument for clamour and war \/ smash it into a thousand pieces, O blind one! There
\ncan be no better argument than this for exercising tolerance. When something is
\nmisapplied and used for the opposite purpose from the one for which it was intended,
\nit must be discarded, even if it is the cane of reason and religion. If religions and
\nideologies turn into instruments of animosity and if, instead of filling hearts with love
\nand magnanimity and inclining them towards the Creator, sow hatred, vindictiveness
\nand arrogance, they must be abandoned.
\nWere prophets not physicians and healers? Are religions not servants of morality
\nand the virtues? What sort of religiosity is it that increases sickness and sets people
\nagainst each other and, in a Godly manner, distributes heaven and hell between
\npeople? It is here that the words of Muhyi al-Din Ibn-Arabi, the great Islamic mystic
\nand Rumi\u2019s contemporary, are so stirring when he says: I\u2019m a disciple of the religion
\nof love \/ wherever the convoy of love goes, my religion and faith follow.
\nMystically, Rumi takes things even further: Religion is neither a sword nor a cane, it
\nis a rope; a rope that the individual must grasp autonomously, with a longing to
\nascend, in order to climb out of the well of ignorance and conceit and glimpse the
\nlight of knowledge, magnanimity and kindness. Many are the people who have been
\ndeceived by the Koran and the Bible (and by religion, in general) because it is not
\nenough for a book to be a book of guidance; the reader, too, must want to be guided;
\notherwise, a totally humane creed can produce totally inhumane results in corrupt and
\nsullied hands. Rumi used the very evocative and expressive term \u2018an upward yen\u2019:
\nBeseech God continually that you may not stumble over these deep sayings and that
\nyou may arrive at the journey\u2019s end.
\nFor many have been led astray by the Quran: by clinging to that rope a multitude have
\nfallen into the well.
\nThere is no fault in the rope, in as much as you had no desire for reaching the top.(2)
\nThe rope is in your hands but you do not wish to climb out
\nof the well. You take it and descend into the well. You do not have \u2018an upward
\npassion\u2019. This is why rectifying the direction and the objective takes priority over the
\nmeans and the instruments. There are people who turn religions into the instruments
\nof animosity and there are people who turn them into the instruments of kindness and
\ncoexistence. It depends on their \u2018passion\u2019, which comes before religion and sits
\noutside of it.
\nWhen we speak of the intolerance of believers towards one another, we must not
\nforget non-believers. Just as we can have religious Fundamentalism, so, too, can we
\nhave secular Fundamentalism. Intolerance is a kind of plague that both the believer
\nand the unbeliever can be afflicted with and if attention
\nis not paid to the biological origin, mental structure and the inherent deficiency of
\nhuman knowledge and if there is no \u2018upward yen\u2019, we can all sink into pride and
\nnarrow, rigid prejudices, which produce no fruit other than hatred, violence,
\nelimination, folly and decline. Before anything else, we must rectify our passion.
\nAnyone who thinks that he has special qualities or especially seeing eyes and that he
\ncan view humanity and history from a greater height and has discovered the hidden
\nand ultimate secret of humanity\u2019s existence and history\u2019s destination, or imagines that
\npolitics and statesmanship are the realization of a divine or historical (religious or
\nsecular) promise, or believes that he has a superior and different standing from
\neveryone else, or treats others in a way that he would not want to be treated himself,
\ncan easily succumb to destructive violence and intolerance and consider this violence
\nsacrosanct. The intolerance of people of this kind is the worst kind of intolerance,
\nbecause, if others see violence as their right, these people see it as their divine or
\nhistorical \u2018duty\u2019. Is it not interesting to note that mystics and prophets were of the
\nopinion that, despite possessing special forces and qualities, they had a mission to
\nbehave towards the masses as if they were one of them and that they even believed
\nthat the unkindness of the masses towards them was an intrinsic hardship of the
\nspiritual path which they had to endure.
\nIslamic Sufism, despite its shortcomings, was the bearer and teacher of values that
\nwe are in great need of today if we are to bolster the element of tolerance. In
\ndenigrating power and wealth, Sufis used to teach people to view these two things
\nwith the utmost suspicion and to be extremely wary of the afflictions they could give
\nrise to, and to know what mortifications their emergence, growth and unchecked
\nexistence could bring. We can even use the denigration of power and wealth to
\nstrenghten \u2013 from a moral perspective \u2013 the fair distribution of power and wealth
\nwhich is among the pillars of liberal democracy or social democracy.
\nBy teaching humility and rejecting avarice and even an excessive avarice for
\nknowledge (!), and by restraining \u2018the pleasure principle\u2019 and bolstering the \u2018quest for
\nvirtue\u2019, they guided people in a direction that reduced tension and conflict amongst
\nthem, thereby encouraging coexistence and moderation. They always asked God to
\ngrant them the ability to do two things: \u2018battling against the self and being benevolent
\ntowards others\u2019, and they believed that the latter was a product of the former. They
\nmaintained that a person has to be hard on himself in order to be magnanimous
\ntowards others; a person has to refuse to forgive himself in order to be forgiving
\ntowards others.
\nIt is sad to say that, in our world, the internal moral elements of seeking virtue and
\ntrying to perfect oneself have become so weak that external measures cannot easily
\ninstil patience, magnanimity and humility in people. One of the reasons why humility
\nhas been considered the greatest virtue and arrogance the greatest vice, is that
\narrogance breeds violence and humility tolerance. Our Sufis held love in high esteem
\nprecisely because love makes the lover humble! They, therefore, considered conceit to
\nbe the slayer of love. The people who turn religiosity into a factor that feeds
\nselfishness and a sense of superiority \u2013 and are arrogant and self-righteous because
\nthey claim to be pious and obedient to religious law \u2013 truly commit the greatest
\ninjustice against celestial creeds. Erasmus was a committed Christian and, at the same
\ntime, a humble and tolerant humanist. His \u2018desire for the top\u2019 prevented him from
\nfalling into the trap of ostentatious, degenerate piety. In the words of Sa\u2019di, the
\nillustrious Iranian poet of the seventh\/ thirteenth century: The fruit-laden branch
\nbends to the ground; in other words, the more fecund a person is, the more humble he
\nis. It is people who are vacuous and inwardly impoverished who fail to be humble and
\ntolerant towards others.
\nIn my country, Iran, a religious state, tolerance has reached its nadir today; I can go
\nso far as to say that tolerance is seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Before, we used to
\nlive under a secular, undemocratic and intolerant state. Today, we have to endure an
\nintolerant religious state. (Hence, religiosity is not a necessary condition of
\nintolerance, nor is secularity a sufficient condition for tolerance.) Today, not just
\nunbelievers but even believers are not tolerated by the state in Iran. And there is no
\nother reason for this other than that the rulers see themselves as the measure of what is
\ntrue and what is moral. And they are bent on taking people to heaven even if they
\nhave to drag them there in chains. The concept of duty has left so little room for rights
\nthat, even when the people want to criticize their rulers, they have to ask them for
\npermission.
\nNewspapers tremble and are easily banned by the dozen with the mere stroke of a
\npen because their variety and plurality is itself a call to pluralism and tolerance.
\nConversely, semi-armed groups of hooligans can operate with impunity and
\ninsolence, and appear by the dozen at public gatherings to break them up and beat up
\nopponents. They are left free to behave in this way because they are the living
\nembodiment of the absence of magnanimity and tolerance. The country\u2019s officials
\nview these incidents with total indifference because this is what their brand of
\nreligiosity, or better put, their \u2018downward yen\u2019 decrees.
\nOur statesmen have taken the rope of religion and are taking the people deep down
\ninto the well of obscurantism. And there are only two reasons for this: first, a
\ndownward passion and second: vacuity. If they were rich in learning and spirituality
\nand if they had an upward passion, the fate of religion and religiosity would
\nundoubtedly have turned out better than this, and they would have adopted
\n\u2018magnanimity towards friends and tolerance towards enemies\u2019 as their slogan.
\nThe conclusion I wish to draw and emphasize is that tolerance is an extra-religious
\n(and certainly not an anti-religious) virtue; exactly like love, which, in the words of
\nthe great Rumi, \u2018lies beyond all religions\u2019. Religions have asked human beings to
\nobey God and to refrain from sin. But love (and love of God, at that) is not a religious
\nduty; it is an extra-religous, moral virtue, which, of course, also enriches and lends
\nmeaning to religion. Tolerance, too, must be viewed in this same light. It is a virtue
\nthat we are all in great need of, whether we are believers or unbelievers. And it is only
\nby teaching tolerance that we can, in Hafez\u2019s words, ensure peace in this world and
\nthe next. The enemies of tolerance \u2013 in whatever guise, religious or secular \u2013
\nare enemies of both humanity and religion. We must guide them.
\nTranslated from the Persian by Nilou Mobasser<\/em><\/p>\n
\n1) Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p.16 rkp 19
\n2) Rumi, Mathnawi, Book iii, 4207-4209<\/p>\n
\nAbdulkarim Soroush
\nPraemium Erasmianum Foundation
\nisbn 90-803956-9-2
\nSeries Praemium Erasmianum Essay
\n1999
\nMichael Ignatieff, Whose Universal Values? The Crisis in Human Rights
\nisbn 90-803956-6-8
\n2001
\nClaudio Magris, The Fair of Tolerance
\nisbn 90-803956-5-x
\nAdam Michnik, Confessions of a converted dissident
\nisbn 90-803956-4-1
\n2002
\nMax van Rooy, The silent theatre.
\nThe documentary photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher
\nisbn 90-803956-3-3
\n2003
\nAlan Davidson, Food history comes of age
\nisbn 90-803956-2-5
\n2004
\nSadik Al-Azm, Islam, Terrorism and the West Today
\nisbn 90-803956-08-4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"