| Abstract: | Anxiety about perceived threats to liberal freedom has played a double role in liberalism. On the one hand, such anxiety has driven the development of liberal institutions aimed at safeguarding freedoms. Yet another, problematic, side of this anxiety can also be found in the history of liberalism and in the policies and practices of contemporary liberal states. From the beginning, liberal intolerance of those perceived to be connected, through religious affiliation or beliefs, with arbitrary or absolute power and therefore deemed to pose a threat to the existing order has justified social exclusion and, in many cases, systematic violence. Rae’s article examines the theoretical and political roots of this distinctive form of liberal anxiety, tracing the connection between anxiety about Catholicism and Catholics in John Locke’s time and contemporary anxieties about the relationship between Islamism and Muslims in liberal states. |
