of toleration towards cultural practices, especially those oppressive of women
and children (Okin 1998 ; Nussbaum 1999 ; Shachar 2000 ).
Does toleration as recognition face these controversial issues any better and
more smoothly than other liberal views? I hold that the perspective of
toleration as recognition also makes a diVerence in the normative approach
to hard cases. The general point is that compatibility plays the role of side-
constraint, while the focus is on equality of status, respect, and justice. From
such a vantage point, the legal framework is not taken for granted, given that
it may well be culturally biased. In this way, the French position against
headscarves at state schools, although grounded on laı ̈cite ́, is nevertheless
seen as implying double standards and heavier demands on Muslim students
than on Christian or non-religious ones (Galeotti 1993 ). The latter do not
have to change their appearance and dressing code, no matter how eccentric
and decent, while Muslim girls must either change their appearance or drop
out of public school. And such a decision is based,Wrst, on a questionable
interpretation of neutrality as requiring the public sphere devoid of any
particularities; and, second, on a biased interpretation of headscarves, as
signs of women’s subordination, fundamentalism, and stubborn refusal to
integrate.
Other hard cases, however, point to a conXict which has less to do with
biased legal standards in our democracies than with the infringement of
individual rights of weak members of the cultural community, typically
women and children. Generally speaking, when individual fundamental
rights are at stake, they should take precedence over the toleration of com-
munity practices. Yet, a blunt application of this general principle usually
worsens the cultural conXict without signiWcantly helping the people whose
rights are jeopardized (Perez 2002 ). Strong legal predicaments against female
mutilations in France, for example, have not reduced the number of victims,
while worsening their physical and practical condition by making their family
risk imprisonment and expulsion. Toleration as recognition is less concerned
with the principled defense of liberal values than with eVective just treatments
of people; hence it shares the view that the approach to hard cases should
always be contextual (Carens 2000 ), that is, careful in the interpretation of the
claims at issue and of the positions of the various parties involved. Moreover,
toleration as recognition makes a distinction between the symbolic recogni-
tion of a collective identity, implying its public visibility and legitimate
presence in the ‘‘normal’’ range of the open society, and the actual acceptance
of speciWc practices and claims. If, as I contend, much of the debate over
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