{"id":7333,"date":"2011-01-22T00:02:19","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T05:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=7333"},"modified":"2019-07-18T11:03:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T15:03:19","slug":"qotd-sikhs-the-kirpan-and-the-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/22\/qotd-sikhs-the-kirpan-and-the-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Sikhs, the kirpan, and the courts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The [Supreme] court didn\u2019t find for the appellants on the grounds that \u201cthe kirpan is not a weapon\u201d. Indeed, all parties to the suit accepted the premise \u201cthat the kirpan, considered objectively and without the protective measures imposed by the Superior Court, is an object that fits the definition of a weapon.\u201d The court found for the appellant because the school board\u2019s zero-tolerance policy towards weapons, based largely on fears that the presence of a knife would somehow allow spooky negative vibes to propagate throughout the school, did not constitute a minimal infringement upon the rights of a religion that happens to insist upon the carrying of a weapon. (Anyone who has studied the remarkable history of the Sikhs can only be surprised that they don\u2019t carry about five of them.)<\/p>\n

I hate to break it to Nav Bains and to admirers of leading comparative-religion scholar Michael Ignatieff, but reciting \u201cIt\u2019s not a weapon\u201d won\u2019t give us a magic wormhole we can all leap through to avoid debates over religious accommodation in public services. As I understand matters, and I am perfectly prepared to receive instruction on this point, the whole point of the kirpan is that it\u2019s an avowedly defensive weapon. The reference books, including those written by Sikhs, tell us that it is worn precisely to signify and reinforce the Sikh\u2019s wholly admirable preparedness to protect his faith, his community, and innocent human life. I suppose I could have added the words \u201cjust as a handgun might be\u201d, but that would send altogether too many of my readers scrambling for the Preparation H.<\/p>\n

Respectable efforts to establish a modus vivendi<\/em> on the kirpan in secured public spaces can\u2019t begin with evasion if they hope to be successful (and certainly it sets a terrible precedent for evasion to be designated courage). I\u2019ll add that the problems are not really all that thorny for those of us who have never consented to fanaticism about security theatre or to cretinizing \u201czero tolerance\u201d of blades in schools<\/p>\n

Colby Cosh, “That non-weapon sure is pointy”, Maclean’s<\/em><\/a>, 2011-01-21<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The [Supreme] court didn\u2019t find for the appellants on the grounds that \u201cthe kirpan is not a weapon\u201d. Indeed, all parties to the suit accepted the premise \u201cthat the kirpan, considered objectively and without the protective measures imposed by the Superior Court, is an object that fits the definition of a weapon.\u201d The court found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,41,11,663],"tags":[1299,113,334,662],"class_list":["post-7333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-quotations","category-religion","category-weapons","tag-bladedweapons","tag-quebec","tag-security","tag-sikhism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Uh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49731,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7333\/revisions\/49731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}