General

Kirpan Kerfuffle

So a few Sikhs try to walk into National Assembly…

It’s a terrible joke if only because the punchline is so damned obvious: said Sikhs go through the metal detector, which goes off because of the ceremonial daggers on their waists, one of the fellows holds a press conference as a result, the (anonymous) brain trust at our august national newspaper blames Quebec, Quebec media pushes back and–voila!–a made-in-Canada scandal. And it’s not even noon yet. Why do people even get out of bed?

There are two important thing to remember here: reasonable accommodations, a phrase that has become so catch-all so as to be essentially meaningless, go both ways. That is to say, if a person wearing religious garb sets off a metal detector, there should be some understanding on the part of that person that a) the metal detector is there for a reason; and b) they don’t lose an ounce of their religiosity if they remove that object for the purposes of public safety–especially if they are doing so to testify in the name of religious freedom.

 

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