Our Good Ottoman Writer

Locke: Toleration, Islam, and Other Non-Christian Religions

Abstract

Locke's long-standing interest in the foundations and limits of religious freedom cannot be reduced to the ideological articulation of his party's interests or to the context of the political struggle of his time: it was based on universalistic and methodological considerations, which went far beyond the circumstances of the time and country in which he lived. It is no coincidence that Locke went, in all his writings on toleration, beyond the sphere of conflicts between the state church and dissident sects in England: the clearest indicator of the philosophically universal intention of his theory of toleration is that he has claimed it, along throughout his intellectual journey, not only for the Christian churches but also for non-Christian religions: for pagans, Jews and Muslims (in a context in which he was among the very few to claim such broad toleration). For Locke, the point has always been the religious foundation of moral and social duties (starting from the respect of promises), without which no society is safe from itself. He was far from seeing all religions on the same level, but he was open-minded about the social utility of religion in general. He thought that only one religion (the one practised in his country) gave men a viable path to heaven. However, he also thought that many religions, indeed almost all, gave men of goodwill a viable path for the not negligible good of peace on earth.