The ideal of tolerance has long played a central role in the Western political imagination. In the context of the multiculturalist policies that characterised the latter half of the 20th century in particular, tolerance has often been presented as an essential component of a prosperous pluralistic society. The ideal of tolerance, however, has also emerged beyond the West in non-democratic, non-secular, and to some extent, not-so-pluralistic societies, including the oil monarchies of the Arabian Gulf. In 2016 the UAE announced its first (and the world’s first) Minister of Tolerance, as part of the country’s wider efforts in recent years to present itself as an ‘open’ and ‘tolerant’ society. Qatar similarly has put great emphasis on the ideal of tolerance, hosting annual interfaith conferences on themes such as religious freedom. Oman hosts an annual meeting on November 16th, the ‘International Day of Tolerance’, and publishes a periodical called Al-Tasamoh (‘Tolerance’). Even Saudi Arabia, notorious for its apparent intolerance at home, funds the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue. Tolerance, it seems, is everywhere. But what is behind the newfound popularity of this ideal in the Gulf? What is the lived experience of tolerance in countries like Qatar or the UAE? How do values travel? This paper looks at discourses of tolerance in the Gulf, focusing in particular on the question of religious tolerance in Qatar and the UAE. It traces the history of the concept, and accounts for its pervasiveness in the region today, drawing on recent anthropological fieldwork, including interviews and participant-observation. While importantly not intimating that tolerance is an inherently, nor is it an exclusively Western ideal, I suggest that the ‘tolerance’ that has become so salient in the Gulf in recent years borrows heavily from Western political discourse. This paper revolves around the following questions; how has the already problematically ambiguous ideal of tolerance been appropriated and mobilised in the Gulf, and to what ends? Given its now central role in Gulf countries’ self-presentation on the world stage, what efforts have been made to promote tolerance at home? And what are the limits of religious tolerance in self-proclaimed Islamic countries? Contributing to the broader conversation on the globalisation of values, this paper describes the lived experience of tolerance in the Gulf today and accounts for its prominence in political discourse.