Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    University Transformation
Sign In
The Review

Tolerance

By Omid Safi August 7, 2011

It’s time to pause and reflect on the current discourse about Islam and Muslims.

The families of the almost three thousand victims who died on 9/11 continue to mourn their loved ones, even as much of the developing world wonders why suffering that took place on American soil should divide the history of not just Americans but the whole world into pre- and post-9/11 phases, while their continuing suffering and poverty has become accepted as normal. One of the persistent topics of discussion in this post-9/11 landscape is tolerance: simultaneously the insistence that Muslims need to be more tolerant (often coded as the need for “moderate Islam”) than before 9/11 and Americans needs to be more tolerant of Muslims.

As a Muslim, a scholar of Islamic studies, and a human-rights activist, I write to argue—indeed plead—against tolerance. Instead, let us look to a new decade that aspires to the higher moral ground of pluralism.

Especially during the last 10 years, we have repeatedly been told that we should strive to become more “tolerant” citizens and develop more tolerant forms of Islam. I respectfully disagree. Tolerance is only a limited and tentative half-step: The origins of the word “tolerance” are in medieval pharmacology and toxicology, dealing with how much poison a body can “tolerate” before it succumbs to a foreign, poisonous substance. Is that our notion of dialogue? Is it about how many Muslims (or gays, blacks, Hispanics, or insert your favorite beleaguered minority group) we can tolerate before they kill us? We can, and must, do better than that.

The call for a “tolerant Islam” is tentative, morally weak, and ultimately confused. What most people mean is simply Muslims who do not kill, preferably don’t oppress women (much), and do not object to the hegemony of American (and possibly Israeli) policies. Like the problematic term “moderate,” “tolerant Islam” implies a middle path between two extremes. One extreme of the Muslim spectrum is easy to imagine (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc.). But pray tell, what lies at the other extreme? A nonpracticing Muslim? An atheist Muslim? What exactly are moderate Muslims moderate about?

Let’s move closer to the conversation about Islam in America, both about Muslim Americans and America’s treatment of her Muslim citizens. Our national discourse is already dominated by a phobia over Shariah, mosques that can’t be built in “our” backyards, and candidates who pledge their allegiance to a Judeo-Christian God who seems to hate Muslims as much as He hates gays and lesbians. Is America to be an ostensibly (Judeo-) Christian country, whereby other religious communities are merely tolerated? Make no mistake about it: There is no clash between Islam and the West, pace scholars like Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, but there are real clashes within America over the very soul of America, over competing visions of what kind of society we wish to be, and clashes among Muslims for the interpretations and practices of Islam.

And here is where the question of tolerance in a post-9/11 world comes to the forefront: For pluralistic Muslims, as indeed for other human beings who recognize our ultimate interconnectedness and oneness, there has to be a higher calling than merely tolerating those different from us. Our challenge is to push America toward what Harvard University’s Diana L. Eck, a leading professor of comparative religion, and others tell us it has already become, the “most pluralistic nation on earth.” This America will be more than merely “Abrahamic,” since even that wonderful umbrella that brings together Jews, Christians, and Muslims still leaves out our Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, atheist, and agnostic friends.

Instead of hackneyed definitions of tolerance and moderation that have absorbed the last decade, let us turn the page to pluralism and solidarity. Pluralism respects and engages not just our commonalities but also our particularities and, indeed, differences. Our distinctions matter.

Without recognizing and embracing what demarcates us as well as what brings us together—without seeing those commonalities and particularities as truly blessed—we cannot strive for a common ground of a shared aspiration for justice and compassion toward all. As the last decade has shown us, if we believe only in tolerance, it will be too easy to forget about the equal protection of all human beings before the law, to trample on the rights of disempowered racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.

Will civil rights be seen as necessary sacrifices in a continuing “war on terrorism,” or will they be seen as the very foundation of what is worth saving about America itself? Will immigrant Muslims realize that in every civilization where Islam has flourished, it has done so through the interaction of timeless spiritual teachings and time-bound cultural contexts? Will the highest and most humanistic elements of American culture be blended into the collage of Islamic values? Can American Muslims be a part of the movement to confront the racism, sexism, classism, consumerism, and militarism of American society while upholding the yet unfinished American dream as a noble experiment?

Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Langston Hughes’s cry, “O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath—America will be!” Indeed, let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. A beautiful, unfinished, deeply flawed, and noble dream. In every age, a civilization is judged by how it treats its weakest and most marginalized. Today, our crumbling American empire is at least partially judged not by how it tolerates, but by how it embraces its Muslim and Hispanic and gay and lesbian and ... citizens.

Let us not just tolerate one another but strive to build a more just and beautiful society. That would be the grandest way to honor the victims of 9/11, and to make sure that the madmen and madwomen, here and “there,” hell-bent on destroying the world, do not get their way.

Omid Safi is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne, 2009).

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

It’s time to pause and reflect on the current discourse about Islam and Muslims.

The families of the almost three thousand victims who died on 9/11 continue to mourn their loved ones, even as much of the developing world wonders why suffering that took place on American soil should divide the history of not just Americans but the whole world into pre- and post-9/11 phases, while their continuing suffering and poverty has become accepted as normal. One of the persistent topics of discussion in this post-9/11 landscape is tolerance: simultaneously the insistence that Muslims need to be more tolerant (often coded as the need for “moderate Islam”) than before 9/11 and Americans needs to be more tolerant of Muslims.

As a Muslim, a scholar of Islamic studies, and a human-rights activist, I write to argue—indeed plead—against tolerance. Instead, let us look to a new decade that aspires to the higher moral ground of pluralism.

Especially during the last 10 years, we have repeatedly been told that we should strive to become more “tolerant” citizens and develop more tolerant forms of Islam. I respectfully disagree. Tolerance is only a limited and tentative half-step: The origins of the word “tolerance” are in medieval pharmacology and toxicology, dealing with how much poison a body can “tolerate” before it succumbs to a foreign, poisonous substance. Is that our notion of dialogue? Is it about how many Muslims (or gays, blacks, Hispanics, or insert your favorite beleaguered minority group) we can tolerate before they kill us? We can, and must, do better than that.

The call for a “tolerant Islam” is tentative, morally weak, and ultimately confused. What most people mean is simply Muslims who do not kill, preferably don’t oppress women (much), and do not object to the hegemony of American (and possibly Israeli) policies. Like the problematic term “moderate,” “tolerant Islam” implies a middle path between two extremes. One extreme of the Muslim spectrum is easy to imagine (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc.). But pray tell, what lies at the other extreme? A nonpracticing Muslim? An atheist Muslim? What exactly are moderate Muslims moderate about?

Let’s move closer to the conversation about Islam in America, both about Muslim Americans and America’s treatment of her Muslim citizens. Our national discourse is already dominated by a phobia over Shariah, mosques that can’t be built in “our” backyards, and candidates who pledge their allegiance to a Judeo-Christian God who seems to hate Muslims as much as He hates gays and lesbians. Is America to be an ostensibly (Judeo-) Christian country, whereby other religious communities are merely tolerated? Make no mistake about it: There is no clash between Islam and the West, pace scholars like Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis, but there are real clashes within America over the very soul of America, over competing visions of what kind of society we wish to be, and clashes among Muslims for the interpretations and practices of Islam.

And here is where the question of tolerance in a post-9/11 world comes to the forefront: For pluralistic Muslims, as indeed for other human beings who recognize our ultimate interconnectedness and oneness, there has to be a higher calling than merely tolerating those different from us. Our challenge is to push America toward what Harvard University’s Diana L. Eck, a leading professor of comparative religion, and others tell us it has already become, the “most pluralistic nation on earth.” This America will be more than merely “Abrahamic,” since even that wonderful umbrella that brings together Jews, Christians, and Muslims still leaves out our Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, atheist, and agnostic friends.

Instead of hackneyed definitions of tolerance and moderation that have absorbed the last decade, let us turn the page to pluralism and solidarity. Pluralism respects and engages not just our commonalities but also our particularities and, indeed, differences. Our distinctions matter.

Without recognizing and embracing what demarcates us as well as what brings us together—without seeing those commonalities and particularities as truly blessed—we cannot strive for a common ground of a shared aspiration for justice and compassion toward all. As the last decade has shown us, if we believe only in tolerance, it will be too easy to forget about the equal protection of all human beings before the law, to trample on the rights of disempowered racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.

Will civil rights be seen as necessary sacrifices in a continuing “war on terrorism,” or will they be seen as the very foundation of what is worth saving about America itself? Will immigrant Muslims realize that in every civilization where Islam has flourished, it has done so through the interaction of timeless spiritual teachings and time-bound cultural contexts? Will the highest and most humanistic elements of American culture be blended into the collage of Islamic values? Can American Muslims be a part of the movement to confront the racism, sexism, classism, consumerism, and militarism of American society while upholding the yet unfinished American dream as a noble experiment?

Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Langston Hughes’s cry, “O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath—America will be!” Indeed, let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. A beautiful, unfinished, deeply flawed, and noble dream. In every age, a civilization is judged by how it treats its weakest and most marginalized. Today, our crumbling American empire is at least partially judged not by how it tolerates, but by how it embraces its Muslim and Hispanic and gay and lesbian and ... citizens.

Let us not just tolerate one another but strive to build a more just and beautiful society. That would be the grandest way to honor the victims of 9/11, and to make sure that the madmen and madwomen, here and “there,” hell-bent on destroying the world, do not get their way.

Omid Safi is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne, 2009).

  • DEATH
  • TERRORISM
  • FEAR
  • EVIL
  • ENEMIES
  • COURAGE
  • JUSTICE
  • PATRIOTISM
  • MEMORY
  • LANGUAGE
  • COOPERATION
  • RESILIENCE
  • TOLERANCE
  • SHELDON SOLOMON
  • STEVEN PINKER
  • ALEX GOUREVITCH
  • TERRY EAGLETON
  • SCOTT ATRAN
  • VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
  • MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM
  • TODD GITLIN
  • LAWRENCE WESCHLER
  • MARJORIE PERLOFF
  • RICHARD SENNETT
  • BARBARA FREDERICKSON
  • OMID SAFI

Also in this special issue:
Charles Kurzman asks: Where are the Islamic terrorists?
Evan R. Goldstein explores an oral-history archive.
Jacques Berlinerblau reflects on Ground Zero.
Peter van Agtmael captures images of 9/11’s aftermath.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Illustration showing the logos of Instragram, X, and TikTok being watch by a large digital eyeball
Race against the clock
Could New Social-Media Screening Create a Student-Visa Bottleneck?
Mangan-Censorship-0610.jpg
Academic Freedom
‘A Banner Year for Censorship’: More States Are Restricting Classroom Discussions on Race and Gender
On the day of his retirement party, Bob Morse poses for a portrait in the Washington, D.C., offices of U.S. News and World Report in June 2025. Morse led the magazine's influential and controversial college rankings efforts since its inception in 1988. Michael Theis, The Chronicle.
List Legacy
‘U.S. News’ Rankings Guru, Soon to Retire, Reflects on the Role He’s Played in Higher Ed
Black and white photo of the Morrill Hall building on the University of Minnesota campus with red covering one side.
Finance & operations
U. of Minnesota Tries to Soften the Blow of Tuition Hikes, Budget Cuts With Faculty Benefits

From The Review

A stack of coins falling over. Motion blur. Falling economy concept. Isolated on white.
The Review | Opinion
Will We Get a More Moderate Endowment Tax?
By Phillip Levine
Photo illustration of a classical column built of paper, with colored wires overtaking it like vines of ivy
The Review | Essay
The Latest Awful Ed-Tech Buzzword: “Learnings”
By Kit Nicholls
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Review | Interview
William F. Buckley Jr. and the Origins of the Battle Against ‘Woke’
By Evan Goldstein

Upcoming Events

07-16-Advising-InsideTrack - forum assets v1_Plain.png
The Evolving Work of College Advising
Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin