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Citizenship 173

justice and equality in relation to racialized minorities are exclusively
focused on the rights of individuals within groups. In his advocacy of
multiculturalism, Kymlicka argues that not only is it rare for ethnic minor-
ity groups to demand “ internal restrictions, ” the legal power to impose
cultural norms on their members, but it is unacceptable from a liberal
point of view, since they undermine individual freedom rather than pro-
tecting it (Kymlicka, 1999a ). The enforcement of cultural norms that
impose traditional restrictions on women and children which are not legal
in liberal democracies, such as arranged marriages which violate existing
laws regarding informed consent, clitirodectomy, and so on, are not
acceptable in liberal multiculturalism. Nevertheless, the distinction
between lifting “ external restrictions ” on group members and imposing
“ internal restrictions ” is highly complex, as Kymlicka himself now admits.
Although, as we noted above, multiculturalism does involve some group -
differentiated rights, they are actually quite minimal in the West. However,
it is not really the law that is at issue here. The legality of practices that
are radically different from the Western norm has mostly been due to an
absence of law. Polygamy, for example, was legal in France until 1993
simply because there was no law against it. And although it is now illegal,
many West African families continue to practice it. Clearly, traditional
practices are not eradicated simply by making them illegal where they are
important to the identities and social relations of people who have grown
up with them. Critics of multiculturalism argue that it promotes a political
culture in which customs that are antithetical to modern progressive ways
of life are tolerated out of a misguided cultural relativism, the view that
each culture has its own values and that all are worthy of equal respect.
The claim that multiculturalism promotes oppressive practices raises

particularly difficult issues for feminists, as it is invariably women and
girls who are portrayed as its victims. On the one hand, as Anne Phillips
argues, it is hardly news to feminists that gendered practices disadvantage
and oppress women. On the other hand, however, many feminists have
been reluctant to criticize minority practices to avoid themselves contrib-
uting to the victimization of women who are vulnerable members of
minority communities in societies in which racism and Islamophobia is
endemic. As Phillips puts it, in regard to the public outrage around prac-
tices of Muslim women ’ s dress, for example: “ People not previously
marked by their ardent support for women ’ s rights seemed to rely on
claims about the maltreatment of women to justify their distaste for
minority cultural groups, and in these claims, cultural stereotypes were
rife ” (Phillips, 2007 : 2). The question is even more complicated because
women are often responsible for safeguarding cultural difference within