The Okin article offers an interesting insight of the tension between feminism and multiculturalism in different countries.  Although post-modern civil societies like the United States are not immune to gender discrimination, societies of many other countries are much more intolerant toward women and justify mistreatment of women.  For an immigrant-country such as the United States which welcomes people from an array of different backgrounds, there needs to be a middle-ground which people of any culture must respect. Although the society should respect view of different cultures, there must be perimeter regarding an individual’s right to exercising their beliefs. Such perimeter would prevent a slippery slope where people of different culture begin to justify their crimes under freedom of religion and creed. Furthermore, it would protect future generations from hatred and discrimination brought from other cultures.

When the Spaniards came to the Americas and saw how the Aztecs sacrificed victims for religion, they were appalled and deemed the natives as savages. Like the Aztecs, many cultures have traditions and practices a post-modern society like ours would not tolerate. While it is important to respect another culture, there must be a limit as to how much a culture can exercise their beliefs. Multiculturalism happens when the society is tolerant of all cultures. However, if a certain culture has practices that cannot be tolerated by many other cultures, the belligerent culture must not be allowed to act out their beliefs. Many Muslim countries are extremely discriminative toward women and tolerate stoning and public executions of women. If we were to grant individuals from those countries the right to exercise their beliefs, we would threaten our own values and values of many other foreign cultures. When individuals arrive and choose to become a part of our society, they have also agreed to respect our culture and forfeit any practices that are considered illegal by our culture. They shall not be granted extraterritoriality under the argument of multiculturalism. If a foreigner is given the right to do whatever they wanted, how can we protect our own citizens and citizens from foreign countries? Though many would say an immigrant-country such as the U.S. has no culture of its own, I would argue that U.S. does indeed have its own culture which is composed of values and cultures brought over from many other countries.  Such delicate bond created between these cultures shall not be forfeit for the benefit of the few.