The Swedish Government deserves sincere thanks for convening the Stockholm International Forum on the topic of “Combating Intolerance”.

We all know that unfortunately xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racial hatred and religious fanaticism throughout the world, including Europe, give rise to hostility and develop into crime, civil wars and international wars.

It is the responsibility of all of us to defend democracy, liberty, the rule of law and social peace against xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racial hatred and fanaticism of all kinds.

The fundamental rule of a democracy that is able to defend itself and of the state governed by the rule of law is that intolerance is not tolerated!

Tolerance requires spiritual and intellectual competence, sensitivity, rationality and alertness. We need to practise being tolerant, we need to learn and teach tolerance. 

William James has described the nature of tolerance very trenchantly in the following words:

“The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not interfere by violence with ours. No one has insight into all the ideals. No one should presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatise about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep.”

We all have a duty to resist the human injustices and cruelties caused by religious and secular value judgements being made absolute.

Hans Kelsen, the great jurist, answered the question of what justice meant to him as follows:

“As science is my profession and as such is the most important thing in my life, it is that justice under the protection of which science, and with science truth and sincerity, can thrive. It is the justice of liberty, the justice of peace, the justice of democracy, the justice of tolerance.”

Only if we establish tolerance in daily life will we preserve justice, liberty, democracy and peace, only then will we achieve them.

Mere incantations and resolutions, however welcome they may sometimes be, do not, though, make a social reality of respect for differences, for the quality of being different, and mutual respect for the dignity of every human being. The fact that we shall be discussing specific projects and specific political practice in this international forum is therefore to be welcomed.

If we examine the prospects for specific political practice, we will have to endeavour to gain a deeper understanding of the causes of intolerance and fanaticism, whatever their provenance. At the same time, however, since human patterns of behaviour are involved, we will also have to examine the social context – what has gone wrong or got lost in the thoughts, feelings and desires of people who are in the thrall of xenophobia, racial hatred, anti-Semitism and religious fundamentalism?

Mental stultification, a ravaged soul and a wayward will are characteristic of the people, frequently with weak egos, from among whom social groups which are hostile to liberty and undemocratic recruit members. The most important way of immunising not only individuals but also the state and society against this is by educating them, by teaching liberty in a very broad sense, by teaching them not just to understand how to calculate but also how to think creatively and to be artistic, an education which is expressed in liberty and does not become bogged down in lifeless, bureaucratic routine.

Only then will the democrats on whom democracy is always dependent reach maturity, democrats who are aware of their social responsibility and are not hidebound by apathy and egotistic indifference.

The world community which is committed to cultural diversity and at the same time to the universality of human rights is dependent on tolerance and respect, so that cultural clashes as predicted by Huntington, religious wars and ethnic conflicts are avoided.

The low point in human depravity was reached in the last century with the Holocaust. We owe it not least to the victims of that period of terror to take active steps towards tolerance and all the other democratic virtues.

We can take Raoul Wallenberg as our model. In one of his letters he writes:

“I shall try to save as many human lives as possible. Try to wrench as many people as I can from the clutches of the murderers… every day costs human lives, I shall make myself ready for the journey as quickly as possible.”

We should be united by a willingness always to be “ready for the journey”, both literally and figuratively, when we are called on to provide assistance and take action to deal with infringements of human rights, with murderous intolerance, with fanaticism, anti-Semitism and racial hatred.