This Handbook challenges the view--widely held today--that religious toleration is a specifically modern, liberal, and Western concept. To the contrary, it shows that principles of religious coexistence have been articulated since recorded history. As many cultures have recognized across times and places, toleration in some form is a key virtue for enabling peaceful coexistence and human flourishing. Yet owing to its very cross-cultural prevalence, “toleration” has meant many different things in theory and practice. To properly understand it, much less evaluate it, a historical and comparative perspective is necessary.
This Handbook provides a foundation for the comparative and historical study of religious toleration. Gathering together primary sources and original analytic essays by leading scholars, it offers the first comprehensive reference work on how toleration has been theorized and practiced across cultures, religions, and historical periods. The primary sources compiled, moreover, span a rich array of genres, including literary works, religious texts, theological, poems and political edicts. Radically shifting the terms of contemporary debates about toleration, this sourcebook provides an indispensable resource to all scholars of religion, comparative politics, and globalization, and to students and teachers alike.
Introduction.- Part I. Thinking Toleration Within Religious Traditions.-
Chapter 1 Introduction to Section One: Toleration within Religious
Traditions.
Chapter 2 Tolerance and Intolerance in the Hebrew Bible.-
Chapter 3 Charitable Jewish Assessments of the Other: 8th-18th Centuries.-
Chapter 4 Hasidism.
Chapter 5 Tolerance and Rights: An Exploration of
Medieval Canon Law.
Chapter 6 Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Toleration.-
Chapter 7 Tolerance in Islamic Thought and Praxis.
Chapter 8 On Pluralism in
the Qur'an and Islamic Philosophy.
Chapter 8 The Qurans Address to the
Israelites Q. 2:122-152: A New Translation.
Chapter 9 Religious Toleration
in Medieval Islamic Thought and Society.
Chapter 10 The Universality of
Universal Peace: Central Asian Qalandars and ul-i Kull.
Chapter 11
Religious Minorities Rights in Shiite Islam: A Shift from Institutional
Discrimination to Absolute Equality.
Chapter 12 May No One Obstruct Them:
Tibetan Buddhist Toleration for 18th-Century Capuchin Missionaries in Lhasa.-
Chapter 13 A Play on Religious Tolerance in Early India.
Chapter 14
Ingredients of Toleration in Jain Philosophy.
Chapter 15 Beyond Toleration?
Syncretism, Amalgamation, and Religious Multiplicity in the Shinto
Tradition.- Part II Toleration and the State: Minority, Law and Politics.-
Chapter 16 Introduction to Section Two: Toleration and the State: Minority,
Law, Politics.
Chapter 17 Asokas Dhamma: Social Toleration or Communal
Harmony.
Chapter 18 Late Roman Toleration? or How to Read an Imperial Edict:
Theodosius to All the People on the Catholic Religion.
Chapter 19
Integration or Intolerance? Muslim-Jewish Convergence in the Zirid Kingdom of
Granada.
Chapter 20 Two Texts on Toleration from Pre-1500 AD West Africa.-
Chapter 21 Half-Toleration: Concordia and the Limits of Dialogue.
Chapter 22
Toleration and the Civil Magistrate in Early Modern Europe, 1517-1598.-
Chapter 23 Regarding Toleration and Liberalism: Considerations from the
Anglo-Jewish Experience.
Chapter 24 Tolerance and Religious Freedom in Early
America.
Chapter 25 Toleration in the Ottoman Empire.
Chapter 26 The Way
has not a Constant Name. State Attitudes to Religious Toleration in Chinese
History.
Chapter 27 Akbars Mahabharata: An Indian Epic for the Mughal
Emperor.
Chapter 28 Religious Minorities-States Relations in Modern Iran
from Safavid Era to the Islamic Republic: Policies and Implications.
Chapter
29 Tolerance and Intolerance in Mexico.
Chapter 30 Post-1998 Indonesia:
Ambiguous Stances Towards Toleration Amidst Growing Islamist
Majoritarianism.- Part III Toleration and Sacred Space.
Chapter 31
Introduction to Section Three: Toleration & Sacred Spaces.
Chapter 32 Of
Roman Bath-Houses, Mosques and Churches: Rabbinic-Jewish Approaches to
Religious Spaces of Others.
Chapter 33 The Temple of Parfait Tolerance: an
Island of Truce between Conflicting Worlds 13th- 18th Centuries.
Chapter 34
Accommodating Difference and Validating Diversity in Early Modern Europe.-
Chapter 35 Toleration as Multiple Construction in the Post-Communist Realm:
Dervish Luzhas Tomb in Northern Albania.
Chapter 36 Building Faith and
Identity in a Community Bound by History: The Nauroz Festival in
Afghanistan.- Part IV Toleration Today: Conflicting Narratives, Competing
Rights and New Frontiers of Dialogue.
Chapter 37 Introduction to Section
Four: Toleration Today: Conflicting Narratives, Competing Rights, and New
Frontiers of Dialogue.
Chapter 38 Religious Toleration and the
Enlightenment.
Chapter 39 Tolerance Revisited.
Chapter 40 The Elusive
Toleration of Islam in Europe.
Chapter 41 Toleration at the Nexus between
Religious Freedom, Pluralism and Democracy: A Focus on the European Court of
Human Rights.
Chapter 42 The Concept of Ubuntu in Contemporary Thought.-
Chapter 43 Paradoxical Abraham: An Essay on Inter-Monotheistic Hospitality,
Dialogue, and Hostility.
Karen Barkey is the Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion at Bard College. Her research has focused on empires, toleration and shared sacred spaces. Her book, Empire of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008), is a comparative study of the flexibility and longevity of imperial systems. It was awarded the 2009 Barrington Moore Award from the Comparative Historical Sociology section at American Sociology Association and the 2009 J. David Greenstone Book Prize from the Politics and History section at the American Political Science Association. Her recent publications include Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism: India, Pakistan and Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Shared Sacred Sites: A Contemporary Pilgrimage (City University of New York Publications, 2018).
Jonathan Laurence is Director of the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Boston College. His principal areas of teaching and research have been concerned with the development of religious toleration and state-religion relations in Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Prof. Laurence's latest book is Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State (Princeton University Press, 2021). Both this work, and his prior book, The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims (Princeton University Press, 2012), were awarded Best Book in Religion and Politics by the American Political Science Association. His first book, Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (Brookings 2006, with Justin Vaïsse) was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine.
