If the existence of honour killings in Pakistan is considered a basis for awarding a lesser sentence to a man that committed an honour killing in the UK, does it not in a certain sense give the practice precisely the sort of cultural recognition that the many opponents of honour killing in Pakistan are trying to fight

In recent years, Muslim women living in immigrant communities in Western Europe and North America have become the flashpoints of the debate between Islam and the West. Whether it is the right of Muslim women to wear niqab while teaching in elementary school in England, or the right to wear modified uniforms for athletic competitions in the United States, the issue has garnered much public attention and debate.

Beneath these debates lies the tension between theoretical commitments to “multiculturalism” in Western liberal states, and the pragmatic issues of exactly how much accommodation a minority group, Muslim or otherwise, is entitled to, based on its cultural or religious beliefs. This crucial question, of who is entitled to accommodation as well as how much accommodation must be given, is one that is both vexing and problematic.

Consider the case analysed by Sarah Song in her latest book Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, 2007). In the People vs. Moua, a Vietnamese man of Hmong descent kidnapped and raped a woman in Fresno, California. The woman filed kidnapping and rape charges but the man argued that his actions were permitted as an accepted form of marriage among Vietnamese Hmong known as “marriage by capture”. The trial was conducted in Fresno, California and the man was given reduced charges owing to his “cultural defence”.

In her book, Song questions whether this application of “cultural defence” was correctly applied in the case and if the man should not have received the full sentence under the law.

As the “clash of civilisations” rhetoric heats up, battles over how much cultural accommodation minority groups deserve have become extremely divisive. Those having the most intolerant views of immigrants are often at the forefront of bringing attention to the most controversial practices within immigrant cultures.

Along the spectrum of views, one extreme argues for no accommodation at all, especially for “voluntary immigrants” who have supposedly migrated at will and have willingly decided to live in another culture.

The other left extreme sees culture as an important social good that creates enriching choices for members of societies and which must be preserved at all costs.

In her book, Sarah Song suggests a middle path that sees neither extreme as a viable option and tries to integrate both the theoretical and pragmatic facets of the multiculturalism debate.

As she investigates the case of the Vietnamese man, she explains, for example, that “marriage by capture” is hardly the only form of marriage in the Hmong community in Vietnam or in the Vietnamese-American diaspora.

The same case can be used to analyse an example closer to Pakistani diaspora, and the issue of honour killings. At the outset, it must be made clear that honour killings are a cultural and not a religious issue. Despite this, Song’s exposition of the multicultural dilemma faced by Western liberal states begs the question of whether a man who kills a woman of his family because he believed that he was protecting his family’s honour and was “required” to do so by cultural mores, be given a lesser sentence simply because of this belief?

Searching for an answer to this perplexing question takes us precisely to the misguided definition of culture operative in such discussions. A “cultural defence” that allows the mere existence of a practice within a culture to be considered a basis for awarding a lesser sentence fails to see the complexity and dynamism of cultural practices.

Take again, the issue of honour killings, the fact that honour killings take place in Pakistan and are even condoned by certain tribal and rural communities does not suggest that there aren’t scores of Pakistanis who are strongly and vehemently opposed to the practice.

If the existence of honour killings in Pakistan is considered a basis for awarding a lesser sentence to a man that committed an honour killing in the UK, does it not in a certain sense give the practice precisely the sort of cultural recognition that the many opponents of honour killing in Pakistan are trying to fight?

In other words, when diaspora communities continue to perpetuate misogynistic practices in the name of culture, and those practices are “accommodated” as in the case of the Hmong man, it assumes a monolithic and unchanging view of culture that denies its dynamics and evolutionary qualities. In other words, it takes a contested practice within a culture and fails to acknowledge the opposition of those who wish to eradicate it.

Recognising the complexity and dynamism of a culture need not mean that all efforts at cultural accommodation be abandoned.

As Song astutely states, many aspects of state practice, especially in Western countries where the separation of church and state is not constitutionally guaranteed, privilege the dominant culture over minority cultures. It is necessary, therefore, to retain some aspects of cultural accommodation that allow for all members of cultural minorities to practice their culture and to not be forced to subsume into a majority culture.

In a globalised world it is also necessary to reconsider the definition of “voluntary” migrants: whose free will in undertaking cross-border moves is thrown heavily in doubt when one considers the imperatives posed by global inequality and the inability of many post-colonial nations to provide sustainable environments for growing populations.

In the debate over multiculturalism, thus, the challenge must be restated from “preserving” cultures, which in their inherently ever-changing quality can never be preserved without seriously disadvantaging them, to allowing cultures the room to grow and change.

As the debate over honour killings illustrates, this allows non-western cultures better chances to contest orientalist stereotypes that particularly highlight the most despicable and barbaric of cultural practices and also rescues the necessary aspects of cultural accommodation from blind morally relativist reifications of any practice that can be passed as “cultural”.