The Performance of Convivencia: Communities of Tolerance and the Reification of Toleration

Abstract

This article argues that Medieval Islamic Spain (with its mythical era of Convivencia) has been selectively used as a ''moral past'' to highlight the possibilities of Jewish-Muslim interfaith dialogue and religious toleration in our times. Using Morocco as a case study, I claim that interfaith dialogue in the Arab World has largely taken place at elite levels rather than among common people or in schools. Accordingly, the conceptual image of al-Andalus remains solely a connective memory that establishes what I call the performance of Convivencia. The Arab political elite has not yet been able to connect the celebrated myth of toleration with the present realities of racism, prejudice and stereotyping to give younger adults a new frame of understanding difference and otherness.