However, in history it has reared its ugly head right from the time of Socrates who was poisoned for teaching logical thinking.
A sidelight is that his wife, Xanthippe, has acquired a reputation as a shrew. But Christine De Pizan, the first female French professional writer, notes in her "The Book of the City of Ladies" that Xanthippe was much younger than Socrates & loved him very much. When he was about to drink the poison, she, writes Christine, rushed in & dashed the cup from his hands. Then she was removed & he drank another cup. But she, according to Christine, grieved for him all her life.
Even Aspasia, who was his contemporary, & a thinker in her own right, had no option but to be a courtesan to mingle with men intellectually on equal terms. The first person in Western society who envisaged God as an emblem of Love, Jesus Christ, was also crucified between two common thieves, as per democratic wish as the judge, Pontius Pilate, washed his hands of the decision.
It is ironic that the religious organisation set up to preach Christ's doctrines, threatened Galileo with torture & made him retract his perfectly sound scientific theory, not to speak of the Spanish Inquisition. The divinely inspired Joan of Arc, who saved a corrupt France from the English invaders, was disowned by the King whose country she saved & was burnt at the stake by the Church for daring to bypass it's authority in dealing with the Divine. Similarly, Saint Bernadette was persecuted for most of her life for daring to access the Divine directly.
The third & final part of "The Book of the City of Ladies" mentioned above gives a list of saintly ladies who became victims of intolerance & were martyred.
Fortunately, the Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism & Jainism were relatively free of intolerance like those mentioned above. Probably because the beliefs like "The Chosen People"(of the Jews), "Jesus is the only way"(Christians), & "There is no God but Allah" (Muslims) of the Semitic religions are replaced by "Sarve Janah Sukhino Bhavantu" of Hinduism. The later Indian reformist Saints like Shirdi Sai Baba, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda & Sri Satya Sai Baba reiterated that all religions are true.
Unfortunately, vestiges of religious intolerance are still present in the west as evinced by "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" where Christ is told to go away by The Grand Inquisitor. Worse, in Richard Bach's "Illusions", Donald Shimoda, a Messiah, is shot dead in modern USA, for preaching a form of Advaita.
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