Notions of tolerance in Islamic political theory
Conflict has received significant academic attention, but existing mechanisms of tolerance and peaceful coexistence have not been studied with an eye to moving beyond Eurocentric conceptualization. The EU-funded project TICMP (Tolerance in Contemporary Muslim Practice: Political Theory Beyond the West) focused on both empirical detail and theoretical constructions of tolerance in the predominantly Muslim context of Pakistan. Two strands of enquiry were joined to offer a new way of approaching political theory from non-western contexts. The project interrogated the different meanings and ideas of peaceful co-existence through oral histories and ethnographic interviews. At the same time, working through the place of tolerance in the political thought of two influential Islamic thinkers, Abul Ala Maududi and Javed Ghamidi, the project has elaborated the limits of liberal notions of tolerance. This research has highlighted the important relationship between tolerance and justice in the Islamic tradition of thought and practice. Finally, the project supported, through conferences and seminars, the establishment of a community and network of European scholars working on non-Western and comparative political theory.
Keywords
Islamic political thought, comparative political theory, tolerance, justice, Pakistan, tribal areas.
