Bertrand Russell used to argue that the most important thing to remember about any opinion was that it could be wrong. That might seem like a reasonable basis for civilised life, even if it is also first step towards moral relativity.
Sometimes we need to think there are certain matters we hold to be right, fundamental, true – even if we can’t gather any evidence for them that would convince a sceptical philosopher. But we might also agree that we’d like to see out schools inculcate a degree of tolerance towards others. In a multi-cultural, multi-faith environment, it warms the cockles of our liberal western hearts to see little boys and girls in their tiny classrooms learning to be nice to each other and grow up in harmony. Unlike those less developed people in their villages, who rise up in angry crowds every time they feel some slight against their nationhood or their holy book, we are so secure in our position we can afford to be tolerant.
And if part of that tolerance includes a passion for free speech, so much the better. It is apparently, a good thing that all sorts of what may or may not be nonsense can be freely expressed without let or hindrance. Even if – how ironic – what is expressed freely in our liberal democracy annoys the hell out of the people for whom we are learning tolerance. We defend their right to believe what they want, and to express their belief that we shall go to hell for not agreeing with it, and, from time to time, to wish we would do so without delay. Just so long as they stop short of sending us there, that’s fine.
It tends to work best when the ‘others’ of whose beliefs we preach tolerance are not too committed. Educated, middle class people from other countries know how to keep their beliefs within the bounds of civilised discourse. It is, of course, only the villagers and extremists who embarrass us by throwing out tolerance back in our faces as proof of our moral decline.
So, when The Pope visits the UK, a few journalists make good headlines from references to child abuse, aids, contraception and the Hitler Youth, then British Catholics write in to say we should respect their faith and not assume they all support his more extreme views just because he claims to be their Holy Father. Fair enough. No desire to fall out with my neighbours, whose views are doubtless complex and ought not to be parodied or oversimplified. But I also have the right to argue that the views of His Holiness are really the most arrant shite. I may be wrong, but they do strike me as not only wrong but offensively stupid.
And this is not just because it is a Catholic view. Other forms of Christianity are equally offensive. On the edges, we have the people who shoot doctors for performing abortions, burn Korans for publicity and write to strangers hoping they’ll die of caner because they don’t accept God’s love. But further in we have the silent majority who still think that something called God made a virgin give birth to a man who later rose from the dead and will help us all live forever in heaven. And think we should base our national culture on this stuff.
Yes, of course, many educated and sensible people are Christians, and many of them reject some of the weirder parts of their own inheritance. We must not fall out with our neighbours by parodying their doubtless complex views. We may be wrong. But, alas, they won’t admit that they may be wrong – faith is a good thing by definition – and many of them express their ridiculous ideas with such conviction that their conviction itself becomes offensive.
It is always difficult to object to the more annoying bits of Judaism without being accused of anti-Semitism. But again, you can respect the complex minds of your neighbour without giving up the right to be irritated by the often racist consequences of an insistence on being chosen, and thus unable to marry into lesser races. Or by prayers in gratitude for not being a woman. And those silly wigs worn because of mediaeval attitudes to female hair.
We can tut tut about female genital mutilation (feminism trumps multi-culturalism and we can’t, surely, be wrong about that). We can object, obviously, to throwing acid in women’s faces. But not to leaving bibles around where children may stumble across them. And then they can read the story of Lot, who gave shelter to two visiting angels. And when the people of Sodom came to rape them, he was so ashamed that the mob would dishonour guests under his protection that he offered them his two virgin daughters instead to protect them. If that happened today in Afghanistan we would be ritually horrified. The fact that is lies unmolested in our own Holy Book is apparently OK.
Except that it isn’t.
In return for the free speech of others we need the right to say in public that all religions are wrong, often silly and frequently offensive. Yes, we might be wrong about what we think. But religions by definition can’t say that. They consider us inferior because we can. The true believer will call us arrogant for thinking we know better than God, which is like saying we are deluded because we can’t see Father Christmas.
So tolerance has to have its limits. We just can’t all agree exactly where they are, in case we offend anyone, and could be wrong.
