Prof Mattson, a Canadian-born professor of Islamic studies at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, was in Dunedin this week to give the 10th annual Otago University Chaplaincy and Dunedin Abrahamic Interfaith open peace lectures.
Prof Mattson said religious tolerance was clearly better than intolerance of other faiths but, ultimately, involved only a ''minimum'' commitment.
Laws also specified minimum protections but often did not consider fuller moral issues and requirements, she said.
The world faced many problems, including climate change and economic difficulties.
Increasing active contacts between people of different faiths was one way of tapping into that valuable diversity of views and producing a wider range of potential answers.
This approach was likely to generate ideas that ''hadn't been thought about before''.
People who worked with and had neighbours of other faiths also had a more positive view of such faiths.
Interfaith engagement would not solve every issue but the benefits were great, including creating ''some understanding''.
Awareness that people of a specific faith were actually part of a much broader community that included other faiths had been ''a really important development in human history''.
It was ''certainly an honour'' for her to be among the participants in the Otago lecture series, given the ''really important and interesting'' people who had taken part, she said.
Otago University chaplain the Rev Greg Hughson has helped organise the peace lectures, in association with members of the Dunedin Abrahamic Interfaith Group.
Prof Mattson has been an adviser to successive American governments and was president of the Islamic Society of North America from 2006-10.
In 2004, former New Zealand prime minister David Lange gave the first of the peace lectures, which organisers said was also his last lecture before his death in 2005.
