The Tolerant Society and its Enemies: Moral Relativism, Multiculturalism, and Islamism

Abstract In this paper, T. M. Murray defends a vision of liberal tolerance as grounding the common good. She critiques the discourse that Western liberalism amounts to ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘cultural imperialism’. She argues that liberal academics, in maintaining these narratives, contradict their own vaunted values and tacitly collude with religious hypocrisy and intolerance. She argues for a universal vision of the common good broadly grounded in human flourishing and human nature and linked to the philosophies of Aristotle and J. S. Mill.