AIBU to question religious exemptions and equal treatment under UK law?

[faithfultoGeorgeMichael]

I thought carrying a weapon in the UK is illegal - for everyone except a trained police officer or solider?

Why is there a religious exemption for one religion to carry a weapon on our streets "in the name of tolerance"?

Rastafarians are not allowed to smoke cannabis legally, even in their own places of worship and homes. My Rastafarian nephew had to be home schooled. Not only was he not allowed to have dreadlocks, but he not allowed to wear a hair wrap to cover them, as the muslim girls were allowed to cover their hair. Appealing on religious grounds got them no where, they tried for 3 years!

Growing and smoking cannabis only harms yourself (unless you selfishly make others breathe it in), dreadlocks harm no one. Why are these not allowed when some can carry a bladed weapon? In an era when knife crime is disturbingly frequent?!

My view - if it is illegal no one can do it (knives, drugs) if it is legal anyone can (head scarf/dreadlocks)

AIBU to say all religions should be treated equally?

it’s high time we restricted the practice of religion to the settings intended to do so. Churches, mosques, temples etc and in the privacy of your own home. But public religion has no place here. If carrying an 8 inch knife is illegal then carrying an 8 inch knife is illegal. The end. The reasons why are irrelevant.

And this has nothing to do with whether this has only happened once. Once is once too many especially when the law essentially facilitated it.

The hair covering thing doesn't make sense in that case. I would have thought it was against the Equality Act. The Cannabis is different as if it's a criminal offence then you can't have a general legal exception. The Kirpan is a small ceremonial knife which has to her sheathed at all times, and people are allowed to carry knives for other reasons too under the Criminal law.

The law id you can carry certain knifes if you had good reason.

Is it use the ceremonial reason you want to ban, or the other reasons?

@JustAnUdea I don't necessarily want to ban anything, I just believe in equality.

If something is illegal it should be illegal across the board imo. So no growing/use of cannabis and no carrying of knives.
In terms of head coverings, if the school allows them for one religion they should allow them for all recognised religions.
Interestingly in secular France, religious head coverings are not permitted. I'm not aware of whether Rastafarians have been affected by this or whether it is just Muslims.

There’s quite a few religious exemptions generally that do irritate me a bit. In my job when training we were told we absolutely must be bare below the elbows. It is a cross infection risk because if you get blood etc on your clothes near your arms you cannot clean it off. You must wash your hands and arms after treating a patient. During training we were not even allowed to wear a cardigan on clinic even in the middle of winter even if we were not actively treating patients ourselves. Absolute no no to ever cover your lower arms.

Unless you have to for religion. Somehow the huge cross infection risk disappears if you say you need to for religion. Now I don’t care how someone wants to dress. But I honestly do not understand how you can be told how much of a cross infection risk something is for one group of people and not for another.

The problem with knives is that they have lots of practical uses so there will always be legitimate reasons people might own them or be transporting them from one place to another.

Whether we remove the defence for ceremonial knives is a matter of debate, but I think this murder was statistically anomalous- most knife crime is committed with knives being carried by people who would have no legitimate purpose defence if they were caught.

I think the ruling about your nephews hair was ridiculous btw.

@ScholesPanda of course, chefs for example. Thanks, this is helpful!

I agree with this solution actually. If it's symbolic it could be a pendant or leg tattoo.

@oviraptor21 exactly!

A ceremonial knife should be completely blunt.
Us wiccans use an athame in ritual and it is never allowed to be sharp - it has to be blunt as it is never used for cutting anything.
Once it has blood on it it must be destroyed. So we go out sometimes into the countryside with knives but mine would not even cut a blade of grass.
If these big old knives are just for ceremonial use then they should also be blunt. There is no need for anyone to be carrying sharp ceremonial knives.

Hansard documents exactly why there is a religious exemption for Sikhs. However, at the time no Sikh had attacked anyone with a kirpan.
In this case, the judge accepted that the knife Henry Nowak was killed with qualifed as a type of kirpan. It is all there to read on the sentencing comments. There were 2 “kirpans”. It was an argument put forward and evidenced by an expert witness.

At the very least, the law needs clarifying as to what constitutes an acceptable kirpan in public.
The law passed in 2019 would not have passed with such a wide exemption if the Henry Nowak case had happened before it was debated in Parliament.

I've no idea why the schools your nephew tried to attend barred dreadlocks or head coverings. I was brought up to believe Rastafarianism was a legitimate religion. Maybe not as widely practiced as Islam or Hinduism but just as established. It just sounds like racism which is abhorrent.

I don't think anyone should be allowed to carry bladed weapons and I didn't know there were any religions where you could in the UK.

If there is a ceremony or something involving swords etc then it should be registered with the council/police and people have to pass checks to have them. And the handling of them is strictly controlled.

This isn’t a “how dare they” it’s a “why wouldn’t they”.

Why wouldn’t the Sikh community say, “we acknowledge there is a knife crime problem on our streets. It’s easy for our traditional and sacred practice of wearing knives to be perverted by people who are not practising our faith correctly. It’s impossible to police, since you cannot police intentions. No one can say which young man is carrying a kirpan and which young man is carrying a knife, just by looking at him. You won’t know which knife is “just a knife” until the individual uses it in an offensive manner. Any other young person walking down a street, seeing a knife, won’t know what the owner’s intention is. That creates a problem. So until we can get our streets under control, we are recommending the British Sikh men help the wider community - which by the way is entirely in line with our faith - by adapting how a kirpan is worn, and either they should wear a brightly coloured rubber knife which cannot be mistaken for an offensive weapon, or they can wear a small item of jewellery representing a knife such as a ring or pendant, or a tattoo on their body. Perhaps one day we will not need this measure, but now in Britain it’s necessary to help to wind back the knife culture that is such a big problem among our young people.”

Also technology and surveillance is moving on with AI and facial recognition. So whether people like it or not, laws have to change including acceptable religious practices in public and on protests.
These religions cannot be stuck in the Middle Ages when societal norms move on.

Kirpans are the OPPOSITE of knife culture. They are about responsibility.

There’s lots of exemptions, not just religious ones. People who use tools, including knives, that would normally be considered weapons can carry them to and from work. YABU for not knowing these well publicised facts before now, and making it about religion rather than the actual context.

Otherwise it’s all “oh don’t demonise us, you’re being racist” but where does that get any of us? Precisely nowhere. If we want to stamp out knife culture, we have to have zero tolerance towards carrying knives. End of.

Does the religious exemption also include airlines does anyone know?

What religion has to cover their arms?

@ServietteUnion the murderer of Henry Novak was British, born and raised here. Where would he go back to?
And no enlightenment here no - perhaps you live in London? Many of us are in less "enlightened" communities.
Well done for not using the tired old cliche "dog whistle", I was waiting for it 😂

The only damage we could do with DHs ceremonial sword is hit someone over the head with it.

It is allowed in India on internal flights and it is allowed to go in the hold. My dads mate has a tattoo for this reason.

I would like to see the disestablishment of the Church of England and for the UK to be a modern, secular democracy.

A bludgeoning is a very medieval English way to go!