from Part II - Interference in Minority Affairs: Physical Harm
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2021
This chapter discusses interference in minority affairs when they engage in physical harm to others. Relevant considerations are the extent of harm, consent (or lack of) of those who are subjected to harm, parental care and responsibility, significance of religious and culture norms and values, and the extent to which a liberal society should intervene in group and individual affairs. It first analyses the practices of suttee, self-starvation, scarring, murder for family honour, female circumcision and female genital mutilation. It is argued that liberal intervention is justified in the case of gross and systematic violation of human rights, such as murder, slavery, expulsion or inflicting severe bodily harm on certain individuals or groups. Such norms are considered by liberal standards to be intrinsically wrong, wrong by their very nature. Physical harm includes cases of widow burning, female infanticide, murder for family honour, and harsh forms of female circumcision, deformation or alteration which are rightly termed female genital mutilation.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.