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.

The opening chapter revolves around the questions: What does liberalism purport to include within the defence of neutrality? What scope is available for conceptions of the good to meet, to mingle and to rival each other? In order to answer these questions, we need to understand what liberal democracy is about, what its ground rules are and how we can distinguish liberal democracies from illiberal societies. To address these important questions, the chapter avails itself of the Rawlsian justice as fairness theory which greatly influenced the liberal discourse during the past century. The Rawlsian theory of justice is supplemented with Kantian and Millian ethics. The chapter elucidates two important concepts without which it is impossible to imagine any liberal democracy: respect for others, inspired by Kantian and Rawlsian philosophies, and the Harm Principle derived from J. S. Mill’s ethics. It is the Harm Principle that guides us in prescribing boundaries to conduct. The necessity in introducing boundaries is further explained by the concept of the ‘democratic catch’.

This chapter examines the limits of state interference in proscribing cultural norms by considering gender discrimination, the right of people to leave their community free of penalties, denying women appropriate education, and forced or arranged marriages for girls and young women. The discussion opens by reflecting on the discriminatory practices of the Pueblo tribes against their women and analysing an American court case, Santa Clara v. Martinez. It is argued that the severity of rights violations within the minority group, the insufficient dispute-resolution mechanisms and the inability of individuals to leave the community if they so desire without penalty justify state intervention to uphold the dissenters’ basic rights. Next, a Canadian case, Hofer v. Hofer, illustrates the problematics of denying reasonable exit right to members who may wish to leave their community. Subsequently, the discussion turns to the issue of arranged and forced marriages of girls and young women. While the latter is coercive the former is not. While forced marriages should be denounced as unjust, arranged marriages can be accepted. Finally, the chapter considers denying education to women, arguing that such a denial is unjust and discriminatory.

Coercion involves two or more parties who are in conflict and whose relationships are complex and uneasy. Generally speaking, people resent coercion and, when possible, rebel against it. This chapter differentiates between circumstantial coercion and person-based coercion, between coercion and brute forms of oppression, and between benevolent and malevolent coercion. It discusses the coercer’s intentions and specifically addresses the issues of paternalistic coercion, coercion via a third party and self-coercion. Two further distinctions are offered: between internalised and designated coercion, and between coercion enforced by a minority versus coercion imposed by a majority.