Will Kymlicka's work has been mainly on these issues. I'd also recommend Walzer's On Toleration, Barry's Multiculturalism & Equality, the late Okin piece (with a number of commentators, Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women?

Okin's essay engages in a bit of bomb-throwing; she wrote a much more thoughtful essay on the subject just before her death, published in Spinner-Halev's edited collection, Minorities within Minorities.

Andrew Cohen's article in Ethics last year is a nice conceptual analysis of toleration and perhaps a useful starting place. IIRC, not about religious tolerance specifically.

You might look at the collection _Toleration: An Elusive Virtue_ edited by David Heyd. I have not read all of the papers but those that I have read have all be quite good. There are papers by Bernard Williams, Scanlon, Josh Cohen, Barbara Herman, Kymlick, George Fletcher, and others. Avishi Magalit has a paper on religious toleration, but it's one I've not read so I can't say if it addresses your specific point. It's a few years old (1998) but perhaps a good place to start. It's from Princeton University Press.

Depending on what you're looking for KC Tan's _Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice_ might be of use, too. It's Penn State Press 2000. There is a discussion of toleration of intolerant societies in it and a critique of Rawls's _Law of Peoples_ view here, among other things.

The issue of toleration is closely connected to the topic of public reason, since toleration entails acknowledging a difference between one's private standards, and appropriate public standards. I teach the issue of toleration in conjunction with Rawls' more recent account of public reason and the critical literature it inspired. Amy Guttmann and Dennis Thompson's new book is helpful and develops a neo-Lockean defense of toleration. Joseph Raz and Brian Barry present rival perspectives.

As for religious toleration, try books by Kent Greenawalt, and (my personal favorite) Robert Audi.

On the question of specifically religious toleration, you should consult the works of the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray. He was largely responsible for the account of religious pluralism and freedom of conscience in the decrees of the Second Vatican Counsel.

Speaking to the point that the issue of toleration is closely connected to the topic of public reason, I think that the best counterpoint to Rawls is Jeremy Waldron's Law and Disagreement. In my view, Waldron presents the strongest possible case for an open approach to public political deliberation. Waldron addresses the specific question of the place of religious reasons in political deliberation in "Religious Contributions to Public Debate" in the San Diego Law Review, Fall 1993.

For historical looks at arguments for and against religious toleration, I think Joseph Lecler's Toleration and the Reformation (2 volumes) is a great source. A good potted history of the debate over toleration is the medievalist Brian Tierney's "Religious Rights: A Historical Perspective" pp. 29-58 in Reynolds and Durham, eds. Religious Liberty in Western Thought (1996). A more recent history that I've been meaning to look at but haven't yet is Perez Zagorin's How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West. Edwin Curley of the University of Michigan has been doing lots of great work lately looking from a philosophical view at writers who don't get so much attention from philosophers: Sebastian Castellio, Montaigne, Montesquieu and so on; check out his CV at the Michigan site for references.

As for more contemporary writers, I second the advice above. I'd add Kent Greenawalt to this list. A recent volume edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum entitled Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith, which contains a variety of perspectives. Wolterstorff's criticisms of public reason ideals are provocative (he coauthored a debate-format book with Robert Audi). There are some interesting articles by political philosophers (e.g. Sandel, Charles Taylor) in the volume Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace edited by James Davison Hunter and Os Guinness (Brookings Institution 1990). Joshua Cohen's piece "Democracy and Liberty" in Elster's anthology Deliberative Democracy is a great piece in my opinion.

As for the question of liberty of conscience, Andrew Altman has a brief discussion of how this differs if at all from religious liberty. See his "Freedom of Speech and Religion" in The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics (2004). (For my part I think that conjoining freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of expression gives you everything you need for freedom of religion.)

On conscience more generally Alan Donagan has an interesting short discussion in his The Theory of Morality. For some historical perspectives Eric D'Arcy's Conscience and Its Right to Freedom (1961) is a good source. And of course there is Bennett's famous piece on Huckleberry Finn.

Hans Oberdiek: "Tolerance: Between Forbearance and Acceptance." Though this might be more in the personal virtue camp.

At the risk of ridicule (I know that Professor Leiter thinks him a "charlatan"), Jacques Derrida's On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness addresses the questions of political and religious tolerance. It's hardly a straightforward read and certainly isn't one of Derrida's better or more straightforward texts - but it might contain a few ideas not found in the other suggested works and it's only 60 pages long. Not quite recommended, but surely worth a read.

At the risk of ridicule (I know that Prof. Leiter thinks him a charlatan), Jacques Derrida's On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness addersses the questions of political and religious tolerance. It's not Derrida's best or most straightforward piece, but might provoke some worthwile thoughts. At only 60 pages, surely it's worth reading.

In addition to the books mentioned, I recommend Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit (Suhrkamp 2003). It offers (a) an extensive reconstruction of the history of the concept and (b) an attempt at a systematic statement of the role that the concept can play in contemporary political philosophy and political practice. It is now without doubt the standard historical and philosophical treatment of this topic in German. (Forst is a professor of political philosophy in Frankfurt and is currently a visiting professor at the New School in New York.)

I agree that many issues about norms of tolerance can be usefully approached by seeing them as developing in response to many of the same forces of religious pluralism that partly gave rise to modern political philosophy, and to our current understandings of 'public reason.' Ed Curley has some really good historical articles on just these issues, and I suppose it's common knowledge now that Rawls describes modern political philosophy, in the Intro to A Theory of Justice, as arising in part from the kinds of religious schisms that arose during the Reformation and forced Westerners to begin trying to articulate a public basis for agreement through such schisms.

If you were to approach things this way, Amartya Sen has a new book entitled "The Argumentative Indian" that should be invaluable for a full understanding of these issues. Sen thinks that India--due in part to its long tradition of religious pluralism and high population densities--has developed a particular and distinctive tradition of public reasoning and debate that may hold special promise for us as we try to develop and sustain appropriate norms of tolerance, which are consistent with deeply-held religious views, in a more globalized context. (He also has a piece called "The Global Roots of Liberalism" that talks about some of these issues.) If the question is how to understand norms of religious tolerance in a globalized context, it would appear especially important to understand some of the non-Western roots of religious toleration as well.

Perhaps even more relevant than Rainer Forst's "Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit" (recommended by Felix Koch) is his "Toleranz im Konflikt: Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs," which offers an 800-page survey of the role played by the notion of tolerance in the political discourse from antiquity to the present.

Jürgen Habermas,"Religious Tolerance - The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights," Philosophy vol. 79 no.1 (2004) pp. 5-18

Abstract:
”Religious toleration first became legally enshrined in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious toleration led to the practice of more general inter-subjective recognition of members of democratic states which took precedence over differences of conviction and practice. After considering the extent to which a democracy may defend itself against the enemies of democracy and to which it should be prepared to tolerate civil disobedience, the article analyses the contemporary dialectic between the notion of civil inclusion and multiculturalism. Religious toleration is seen as the pacemaker for modern multiculturalism, in which the claims of minorities to civic inclusion are recognized so long as members of all groups understand themselves to be citizens of one and the same political community”.

Though somewhat polemical, Brian Barry's "Culture and Equality" (HUP, 2001), is a nice counterpoint to the Kymlicka and Taylor-style cultural rights literature. It also takes a somewhat less tolerant tack than Rawls in "Political Liberalism," and his later writings on Justice as Fairness.

A few sources on the question of whether (and how far) to tolerate the intolerant: this question is addressed by both Yael Tamir’s article and Martha Nussbaum’s article in Nancy Rosenblum’s recent anthology Obligations of Citizenship and Duties of Faith. Tamir's article is about religious hate speech; Nussbaum's article is more general in focus. Joshua Cohen discusses the cases of racist speech and pornography in his “Freedom of Expression” (Philosophy and Public Affairs 1993). He also has an article just on the subject of pornography. I believe it is in an anthology on that subject. I don’t have the bibliographic details at hand, but a Google search should turn it up. Cohen defends a moderate position in the debate. For an approach more hostile to intolerance, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic’s “Words That Wound” is a good starting point. For an extreme “tolerate the intolerant” position you might take a look at Carl Cohen’s article on the Skokie Nazi parade; I believe it appeared in the Nation around the time of the event.

Thanks to Tamar Gendler for the correction. "Toleranz im Konflikt" is indeed the title by Forst I meant to refer to, rather than his older book.

Dear Professor Leiter,

I'm sure somebody will have mentioned it already, but I remember being struck by Bernard Williams' essay in a collection on tolerance edited by D. Heyd. It seemed to may as if finally something illuminating had been said on a much discussed subject, though my impression might be due to my lack of acquiantance with properly philosophical work on tolerance, and my overexposure to cliches in this area.

Williams' review of The Last Word by T. Nagel (NYRB 1998, Nov. 19, vol. 45, no. 18) also contains a brillians discussion of what the point might be of ethical appraisals of practices and beliefs with which one stands no chance of a practical confrontation. I don't think that he discusses tolerance as a separate phenomenon there, nor that he has anything to say about specifically religious beliefs or practices. But it's still thought-provoking in his usual way.

And let me take this opportunity to say that I have enjoyed your blog, especially the bits about legal philosophy. Is there any chance you might be giving a talk in Edinburgh or otherwise visiting the city during your autumn trip to the UK? If so, please let me know and I'd show you round the city.

With best wishes,

Wojciech (Jajdelski)