Abstract
This chapter examines the Practical Reconcilability Proposition with respect to the liberal state and Shiite Muslim citizens by looking at how the former tolerates the latter. The next chapter will be devoted to examining this proposition by looking at the grounds on which the liberal state is acceptable to Shiite Muslim citizens. First, an examination will be made to create a list of the protections, freedoms, and opportunities that the Millian liberal state appears to offer Shiite Muslim citizens. Then, a similar exploration will be made with regard to the protections, freedoms, and opportunities that the Rawlsian liberal state appears to provide for Shiite Muslims. It should be emphasized that my concern is not with real liberal states at a given time. This would be an empirical judgment that would require undertaking surveys regarding some specific liberal societies. Rather, since this book is a philosophical research, I am concerned with what Millian and Rawlsian ideal liberal states are expected to provide for their citizens.
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Notes
John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” Utilitarianism, on Liberty, Considerations of Representative Government, ed. Geraint Williams, 3rd ed. (London: Every Man’s Library, 1993), p. 85.
Ibid., p. 85.
Ibid., p. 78.
Ibid., pp. 80–81, 174.
F. W. Garforth, Educative Democracy, John Stuart Mill on Education in Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 160.
John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism,” Utilitarianism, on Liberty, Considerations of Representative Government, ed. Geraint Williams, 3rd ed. (London: Every Man’s Library, 1993), p. 18.
Liberal educational systems in general, as Levinson argues, require the intrusion of the liberal state into children’s life in the form of compulsory public education. This compulsory education should be separate from the environment of children’s home, that is, through public schools. See Meira Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 58. Hence, public schooling is the major assurance that citizens will support national values.
See Thomas J. La Belle and Christopher R. Ward, Multiculturalism and Education, Diversity and Its Impact on Schools and Society (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), p. 69. These shared values, as Zhidas Daskalovski suggests, are necessary grounds for nation building, which “is a phenomenon of the modern liberal democratic state.”
See Zhidas Daskalovski, “Neutrality, Liberal Nation Building and Minority Cultural Rights,” Critical Review of International and Political Philosophy 5, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 31. For the survival of the liberal state in a diverse society depends on maintaining some “common substantive purposes” that should be transmitted to the next generation through civic education.
See Larry Becker and Will Kymlicka, “Introduction,” Ethics 105, no. 3 (April 1995): 466.
John Stuart Mill, “Utility of Religion,” Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 10, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 422.
It is argued that the Millian educational system would be, more or less, similar to what prevails in contemporary public schools in Western societies. Parekh argues that this kind of educational system is deeply secular or has a monocultural orientation with regard to “curriculum, the organisation, personnel, the structure of authority, the pedagogical techniques, the competitive ethos,” and the like. See Bhikhu Parekh, “The Concept of Multi-Cultural Education,” in Multi-Cultural Education, the Interminable Debate, ed. Sohan Modgil et al. (Sussex: Falmer Press, 1986), pp. 20–1.
Brian Barry, Culture and Equality, an Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), p. 29.
Christine R. Barker, “Church and State: Lessons from Germany?” Political Quarterly 75, no. 2 (April–June 2004): 171–5.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 53.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 134.
Amy Gutmann, “Civic Education and Social Diversity,” Ethics 105, no. 3 (April 1995): 559–60.
Stephen Macedo, “Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of God v. John Rawls,” Ethics 105 (April 1995): 479.
Will Kymlicka calls Rawls’s idea of neutrality of aim “justificatory neutrality” and his idea of neutrality of effects “consequential neutrality.” See: Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality,” Ethics 99, no. 4 (July 1989): 884.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 193–4.
John Horton, “Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration,” in Liberalism, Multiculturalism and Toleration, ed. John Horton (London: Macmillan Press, 1993), p. 3.
William A. Galston, “Two Concepts of Liberalism,” Ethics 105, no. 3 (April 1995): 528.
Chandran Kukathas, “Are There Any Cultural Rights?” Political Theory 20, no. 1 (February 1992): 116, 128.
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© 2008 Hamid Hadji Haidar
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Haidar, H.H. (2008). Toleration of Shiite Muslims by the Liberal State. In: Liberalism and Islam. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610545_8
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