Abstract
A multicultural society is likely to include minorities some of whose values and practices differ from and even offend against those of its own. It cannot tolerate them indiscriminately for that involves abdicating moral judgement and compromising its commitment to its own values. How-ever to disallow them is to be guilty of extreme intolerance and to forgo the opportunity to take a critical look at itself. This raises the question as to how a multicultural society should decide what minority practices to tolerate and within what limits. This essay addresses that question.
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Notes
For a valuable discussion, see Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizen-ship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
For further discussions, see my ‘The Concept of National Identity’, New Community Vol. 21, No. 2, April 1995; and ‘Discourses on National Iden-tity’,Political Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3, September 1994.
For a further discussion see my The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy’ in David Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
See O. Koso-Thomas, The Circumcision of Women (London: Zed Books, 1987); and Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, fact sheet no. 23 (United Nations, 1995).
See R. Cligent, Many Wives, More Powers: Authority and Power in Poly-gamous Families (Evanston: North Western University Press, 1970); and S. Gbadegesin, ‘The Ethics of Polygyny’, Quest: Philosophical Discussions, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1993.
For such absurd assertions, see Jan Goodwin, Price of Honour: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World (London: Werner Books, 1995) pp. 64, 65,123, 264, 343 and 346.
Stephen Toulmin thinks that there is no rational way to discuss whether polygamy should or should not be allowed. The question is ‘an unreal one’ because polygamy is not an ‘alternative’ for us. Since monogamy is central to our way of life, to ask if it is better than polygamy is to ask if our way of life is better than the Muslim, an inherently unanswerable ques-tion. (Reason in Ethics, p. 153). As I argue, polygamy can become an alternative for ‘us’ and that it can be rationally debated without discuss-ing the relative merits of ‘our’ and Muslim ways of life.
Ibid., pp. 33 and 337. A woman comments: ‘He just moved her into our home. One day she wasn’t there, the next day she was. After that time I sit in the same room with them and he hardly speaks to me, he has never come into my bed again, and he ignores our children and favours hers. It is difficult to get him even to buy clothes for mine’ (p. 33).
Although polygyny is permitted in many Muslim countries, it is subjected to various restrictions. In Syria it is disallowed if the husband is unlikely to have the resources to maintain more than one wife, and in Morocco and Iraq if he is unlikely to treat them with equal justice. In Pakistan and Bangladesh it is allowed only with the permission of an arbitration coun-cil. In Jordan a woman can stipulate at the time of her marriage that her husband will not take another wife during their marriage.
It is worth noting that polygyny is allowed in the Old Testament, and that Jesus of Nazareth attacks adultery and divorce but is silent about polygyny. See J. Cairncross, After Polygamy Was Made a Sin: The Social History of Christian Polygamy (London: Routledge, 1974), and Adrian Hastings, Christian Marriage in Africa (London: SPCK, 1974). For a good general discussion of polygamy, see Eugene Hillman, Polygamy Reconsidered (New York: Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1975). J.S. Mill, On Liberty, ch.4, argues that polygamy is a`direct infraction’ of the principle of liberty because it subordinates women to men. This is only true of polygyny and does not apply to polygamy. Mill allows Mormon polygyny because Mor-monism is a voluntary religion and women join it and accept polygyny out of free will. There is therefore no reason to launch ‘a civilizade’ against it. The Utah branch of the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned its parent body ‘to make legal recognition of polygamy a national cause like gay and lesbian rights’. Its argument was based on ‘diversity of life-styles’. Mayor Dan Barlow, who has five wives, remarked that ‘in the liberal age with all the alternative life-styles that are condoned, it is a height of folly to censure a man for having more than one family’. A female lawyer, her-self one of nine wives, thought that ‘it is the ideal way for a woman to have a career and children’. For all this, see New York Times, 9 April 1991.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Parekh, B. (1999). The Logic of Intercultural Evaluation. In: Horton, J., Mendus, S. (eds) Toleration, Identity and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983379_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983379_9
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