TOLERANT INTOLERANCE

TOLERANT INTOLERANCE

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Canadian Tolerance Restrains Intolerance

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Muslim parents demanded the abolition of pork in all the school canteens of a Montreal suburb.  The mayor refused, and sent a note to all parents. 
"Muslims must understand that they have to adapt to Canada and Quebec, its customs, its traditions, and its way of life, because that's where they chose to immigrate.  “ Muslims must understand that they have to integrate and learn to live in Quebec. "They must understand that it is for them to change their lifestyle, not the Canadians who, so generously, welcomed them.”

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An inclusive multi-cultural united system, which respects the rights of everyone within the system, cannot tolerate the intolerant aspects of any of its sub-systems.  Unrestrained, an active intolerant minority can impose its intolerance on a tolerant system.  At this time, the USA is an inclusively united governmental system that must tolerate sub-systems including a number of religious systems.  Most religions contain intolerant aspects that if imposed on the overall union, threaten the freedom of the multi-cultural unit.  Therefore, the United States government must tolerate sub-systems, even though they historically contain intolerant features, without permitting those intolerant aspects to limit the tolerance of other members of the union.

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. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader, and risk analyst, whose work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty, believes that a tolerant governmental system cannot restrain the intolerant aspects of actively committed religious minorities.  In an article called, The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority, he says, “that we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities.”  He goes on to say, “It is not permissible to use ‘American values’ or ‘Western principles’ in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other peoples’ right to have their own religion).”  With this assessment he then declares, “The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.”  I must agree with him, but only if we cannot restrain the intolerant aspects inherent in most religions. 

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Pew Research Center’s latest data shows that, “Islam is currently the world’s second-largest religion (after Christianity), it is the fastest-growing major religion.  Indeed, if current demographic trends continue, the number of Muslims is expected to exceed the number of Christians by the end of this century.” 

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Pew’s demographic projections estimate that Muslims will make up 2.1% of the U.S. population by the year 2050.  That is a very same minority.  However, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb explainsHe describes this as the minority ruling by a principle he identifies as the “Asymmetry Rule of Renormalization.”  To appreciate the threat, I recommend reading his article.

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According to a minority activist during the Czechoslovakian uprising,  Valclav Havel,  it only takes an active minority united in a common cause to change a society and its culture.  His essay, “Power of the Powerless” written in 1978, became the manifesto for the Czechoslovakian, Polish and other uprising against communistic regimes.  In it, he described a defense method against totalitarian systems, in which, “every individual is trapped within a dense network of the state's governing instruments” of ideology, which in that case was a “secularized religion.”  He said that the authority of such systems relies on a, “labyrinth of influence, repression, fear and self-censorship which swallows up everyone within it, at the very least by rendering them silent, stultified and marked by some undesirable prejudices of the powerful."

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Totalitarian authority systems are not restricted to secular religious systems only, but characterize all systems that impose religious mandates on a population, whether secular or spiritual.  Living within a politically governed religious system, like communism or in my view America Christian coalitions, Havel says, “Individuals must live a lie, to hide that which he truly believes and desires, and to do that which he must do to be left in peace and to survive.”
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 The goal Havel sought was, “a newfound inner relationship to other people and to the human community.”  He said his vision was to, "provide hope of a moral reconstitution of society, which means a radical renewal of the relationship of human beings to what I have called the 'human order,' which no political order can replace.”
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Our goal, in the United States, should not be a religiously neutral political system, but a religiously tolerant system that restrain the intolerant aspects of any of its religious sub-groups, including Christianity.
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However, I recognize that governing the intolerant aspects of religion, while necessary, is not enough to secure peace and unity with in our multi-diverse nation.  Our population needs to relate to each other in a less authoritative, prescriptive, and intolerant manor.  Havel acknowledges that power is relational.  In agreement, I submit that if we promote the more tolerant, empathetic, and benevolent aspects, found in all our religions, lifting tolerance to a position of our nation’s highest goal that tolerance will not permit intolerance.  Otherwise, I see nothing but more disharmony, strife, and separation ahead.  It would please me, and if I understand God, it would please Him as well, if Christian tolerance took the lead in just such a sociocultural revolution.  That process could start today. 
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Havel wrote, "living in truth meant rejecting the notion that power is something to be grasped or abolished.”  I accept the notion but restate his axiom saying the power of Godly love is not to be grasped or abolished, but released and employed.  Love, including love for our enemies, is the most powerful force a human can release and employ in activating tolerance that restrains intolerance.  Christianity does not need government authority to influence our nation’s sociocultural character.  A tolerant loving Christianity could become the group Nassim Taleb identifies as, “a widely distributed intransigent minority dictates the norms of a society.”   It is up to you and me.