Case Study in 1994, a 17-Year-Old Girl Named Fauziya Kassindja Entered the Entered

Case Study
In 1994, a 17-year-old girl named Fauziya Kassindja entered the United States seeking asylum. She had fled her native country of Togo to escape female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM is a permanently disfiguring procedure that UNICEF estimates up to 200 million women have undergone. Though Fauziya's immediate family opposed FGM, her father suddenly died when she was 16. After her father's death, Fauziya's grandfather arranged for her to undergo FGM (read more on HYPERLINK "http://www.pbs.org/speaktruthtopower/fauziya.html" PBS).
Fauziya's mother and sister managed to help her escape to avoid FGM. However, in the United States, Fauziya was imprisoned for two years while the authorities decided what to do with her. She was finally granted asylum but not before becoming center of a controversy about how Americans should regard the social practices of other cultures. A series of articles in the New York Times argued that FGM is a barbaric practice that should be condemned. But others were reluctant to be to make such judgments, worrying that it would be intolerant or imperialistic to condemn other cultures' social practices, even if they were clearly immoral by the standards of American culture.
-Do you think there is anything intolerant or imperialistic about issuing universal moral condemnation of practices like FGM? What about other cultural practices that are less extreme but nevertheless seem morally wrong to us? Is cultural relativism more plausible with regard to some cases than others?

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There is nothing intolerant or imperiali...

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