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To the extent that the Dawoodi Bohra custom of circumcising girls as well as boys (1) has broad support among Dawoodi Bohra women, (2) is motivated by a gender-equal interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 17 of the Hebrew Bible) traceable to the views and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, (3) is less physically invasive than a legal male circumcision as practised by Jews and Muslims, and (4) there is scant evidence of serious harms associated with the procedure, it seems reasonable to suggest that space should be made in a liberal, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multicultural society for this particular long-standing family life custom. When and if those four conditions hold, the custom is arguably protected by principles of religious liberty, family privacy, parental rights and equal protection for both females and males before the law.

Muslim women of the Dawoodi Bohra community have recently been prosecuted because they customarily adhere to a religiously based gender-inclusive version of the Jewish Abrahamic circumcision tradition. In Dawoodi Bohra families it is not only boys but also girls who are circumcised. And it is mothers who typically control and arrange for the circumcision of their daughters. By most accounts the circumcision procedure for girls amounts to a nick, abrasion, piercing or small cut restricted to the female foreskin or prepuce (often referred to as 'the clitoral hood' or in some parts of Southeast Asia as the 'clitoral veil'). From a strictly surgical point of view the custom is less invasive than a typical male circumcision as routinely and legally performed by Jews and Muslims. The question arises: if the practice is legal for the gander why should it be banned for the goose?

Should there be gender equity in genital cutting? In Germany (and much of Europe), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be proscribed. In Sierra Leone (and several other countries in Africa), the native inhabitants tend to argue there is moral equivalence between customary male circumcision and customary female circumcision and both should be permitted. In the United States, the native inhabitants tend to argue against moral equivalence, permitting customary circumcisions for boys while proscribing them for girls. Who has the better of the argument? And what are the implications of the argument for Jews and other circumcising ethnic groups living in Europe, Africa, and North America?

The aim of this essay is to distinguish between two types of liberals: imperial liberals versus liberal pluralists. The two types I have in mind are those who assume that liberal ways of life are objectively more valuable than illiberal ways of life and should replace them (for the sake of making the world a better place), and those (such as myself) who don't make that universalizing assumption and believe instead that you can't live by liberalism alone. As a thought experiment I am going to examine the proposed distinction with regard to one small aspect of family life, albeit one that affects 20—30 percent of all males in the world in a very intimate way, namely the practice of male circumcision. This is a practice which at least in some of its varieties (for example, Jewish neonatal circumcision) and in the eyes of some of its critics (those who are unimpressed by claims and arguments about health benefits), seems patently illiberal (and even barbaric). Given the characteristic features of Jewish circumcision — a customary practice which originated as part of an imagined everlasting pact between Jews and their God and by means of which adult members of that community surgically mark the body of all male infants born to members of the group — it is not hard to see how in the eyes of an imperial liberal who assumes the universal pre-eminence of liberal ways of life over illiberal ways of life, this particular familial and communal tradition might be viewed as "the despotism of custom." On the other hand it is also not hard to imagine how in the eyes of a liberal pluralist who makes no assumption about the universal progressive replacement value of liberal over illiberal ways of life, the practice of neonatal male circumcision, even in absence of health benefits, might merely be viewed as an alternative and legitimate way of life "expressive of genuine human needs and embodying authentic varieties of human flourishing" (here quoting John Gray),1 whose illiberality is not a measure of its lack of moral value. Examined are those two sets of eyes and their view of the practice of male circumcision.