A/CONF.189/PC.1/7 page 32 Comment No. 2 121. Discrimination and intolerance are practised not only by the State or its federal, regional or local subdivisions; they are also practised by members of different groups, one against the other, particularly where there is a wide variety of minorities and no true majority (see above, para. 112), or of groups which are ethnically and religiously different from the majority of the population (see above, paras. 103-105). Tolerance is first and foremost an attitude of profound understanding which should be reflected in an individual’s daily behaviour above all. However, whether the State adopts a completely neutral position on religion and allows it to remain a private matter, whether it rejects religion or professes a faith, it has a fundamental role to play in promoting tolerance and ensuring respect for different religious and ethnic identities. The State and civil society should take steps to change individual attitudes so as to enable groups, if not to coexist peacefully, at least to live without confrontation. The action they take should be appropriate to the relations a minority or ethnic and religious group enjoys with the majority or with other groups, and relations within the groups themselves. When a State, in its Constitution, claims membership of the same group as the majority or the dominant minority, it has, if anything, a greater responsibility to avoid discrimination than where there are scattered minorities, or where the State’s neutrality is an especially important principle. Comment No. 3 122. In some cases, it is very difficult to distinguish between religious and racial or ethnic discrimination or intolerance. In other cases the two forms of discrimination may even become confused in the mind of both the perpetrator and the victim of the discrimination. As stated in chapter 1 of this study, religion shares something of the definition of ethnicity, just as ethnicity is basic to religious identity. Comment No. 4 123. Similarly, it is sometimes difficult to separate out religious and ethnic considerations from underlying factors that might help to understand the true intentions of the perpetrators of discrimination. In the study already quoted, Gordon Allport [1954] argues that deviation in creed alone does not account for the persecution, and that discrimination is not caused by religious doctrines at all. Similarly, E. Odio Benito concludes that there does not seem to be any discrimination that is purely and exclusively religious.131 In fact, the “rest of the iceberg” is often to be found elsewhere, that is, in questions of politics and power, relations between States, social and cultural factors, economics and even ancient history. Thus what seems at first to be an irrational rejection of the other person’s religion, race or sex, merely helps support or inflame a feeling that can be fully explained at a much more rational level or at least at a level where objective factors are important enough to be dealt with in quite practical ways. Comment No. 5 124. In many of the cases studied, the factors that lead to aggravated discrimination and intolerance are not specific but are also to be found in single forms of discrimination. Some of the most important of these are ignorance and lack of knowledge of others, of their religion and religious customs, rites and mythology, lack of dialogue, stereotyping, prejudice, the negative