I find myself in a lonely place in relation to many liberals, political and religious, because I cannot accept a multiculturalism that tends to excuse, under the rubric of “tolerance,” religious and cultural practices that violate universal human rights.

The above is from an excellent piece by Susan Jacoby on the tension that arises when political liberals assign more weight to multiculturalism than to universal human rights.

This is a tension with which I’m very familiar: it presents my students with a great many problems and, as someone who is involved in an interdisciplinary human rights program, it often rears its head in conversations with colleagues from different academic disciplines.

At bottom, what’s at issue is which right we ought to privilege when two rights clash with one another. For example, freedom of religion is clearly a fundamental right but so too is bodily integrity/security.

If my co-religionists believe that our religion requires that bodily harm be done to me and I do not agree, it seems clear that I ought not to be forced to suffer the harm. But sometimes, in the name of celebrating other cultures and religions, this is precisely what political liberals will argue; or, rather, they will argue that it isn’t anyone else’s place to get involved — which, of course, amounts to taking sides.

What ought not to be forgotten — and what Jacoby highlights in her piece — is that attempting to sit out such a debate in the spirit of embracing (or even just tolerating) foreign cultures or religions is, in fact, to think of culture or religion narrowly — as something monolithic — rather than to recognize that within every culture or religion there is an ongoing debate about beliefs and practices.

In short, it amounts to siding with the powerful in that culture or religion, those who currently call the shots, against the weak, those who do not. When expressed this way — rather than as a question about one’s belief in the principle of toleration — it undoubtedly presents as a more difficult decision facing good political liberals.