We cannot board a flight with 100ml+ liquid and a rub down - despite being innocent. Sikhs should not be allowed to carry knives for the same reason.

[Ndd1356387]

We are all generally good - right?. And yet we all have to go through security checks at the airport. Despite the fact we are all generally good. But we cannot carry 150ml liquid on a flight. I get that and appreciate it and respect it. Sikhs now must respect that they all cannot carry knives. Surely ?
Edited

No - I am not talking about that. I am talking about people who had never heard of kirpans or this exemption full stop. That has surprised me.

Again why?

Because I thought it was common knowledge, but then I guess it does depend where you were raised.

I guess if you don't know any Sikhs, why would you? Like I said, there were several Sikh families when I was growing up so I knew vaguely of the wooden comb etc - but I had never seen anyone carrying a knife, never mind a teenager.

I read an article where someone said that the younger generation of Sikhs is very different and far more militant than previous generations, and that expecting them to be as peaceable as their fathers is a mistake. Although TBF there has been Sikh terrorism in the past - they murdered Indira Ghandi, and there have been attacks in Canada too IIRC.

If you lived in the punjab region of the indian subcontinent then I could understand your astonishment.

Nope. The UK.

I gathered that.

Just to be clear, there is no specific exemption for kirpans. The exemption is for knives worn for religious reasons or as part of a national costume, hence why Scotsmen wearing traditional Highland dress can have a dagger (a sgian-dubh) in their stocking. Note that most Sikhs wear a small knife hidden from view. Some are members of an order called the Nihang who traditionally wear a second knife that is fully visible. Digwa, Nowak's killer, observed that tradition, but his father and brother did not.

The amount of knife crime committed by Sikhs is vanishingly small. Knife crime by any ethnic group using knives worn for religious purposes or as part of a national costume is pretty much non-existent, which is, perhaps, part of the reason we have heard so much about this case. The vast majority of murders in the UK get little or no coverage in the national press.

We will never know if banning knives would have made any difference in this case. Given Digwa's obsession with weapons, he may have carried a knife anyway, even if it was illegal. Almost all knife crime is committed using hidden knives being carried illegally. Maybe we should stop knives being worn for religious reasons or as part of national costumes, but I would be wary of a knee jerk reaction to this particular case.

Also, I'm not sure why OP is comparing what she is allowed to take onto a flight with what people are allowed to carry in public generally. There is no restriction on the amount of liquid you can carry in public. Indeed, at Heathrow, Gatwick, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh airports you can board a flight with a container carrying up to 2 litres of liquid. You are not allowed to take any knife onto a flight at any airport for any reason.

‘ You are not allowed to take any knife onto a flight at any airport for any reason.’

Well, that is good to know. Phew!

I now have a bizarre image in my head. West Side Story type of one gang wearing Highland dress, and the other dressed up as Sikhs All to avoid knife laws, and to enable them to legally carry their knives. Now that everyone has gotten wind of the exemptions.

I wonder if you could just wear the socks, with the hidden knife tucked in. ‘My kilt’s in the wash, officer’.

No disrespect to either in real life. Criminals use false identities all the time to carry out crimes.

And, of course, despite the law, there is no shortage of people/thugs/gang members using knives to attack and kill others.

That it might not have made any difference is hardly the point. Otherwise we can just let everyone carry knives because after all the ones who want to kick someone will just take a screwdriver or something anyway.

Similarly the “Oh this hardly ever happens” is a terrible argument - the question is WHY should anyone be allowed to carry weapons that other people are not allowed in the first place?

Ok an exemption was granted but it turns out (unsurprisingly TBF) that some people abuse that exemption. And unless you think that one murdered 18 year old is a small price to pay for (what, exactly??) then one murder is one too many and the exemption needs to be removed.

So if a workman uses his work knife (which he is legally allowed to carry in public) to kill someone, you would ban all workmen from carrying knives?

So that’s a good example of my point about WHY an exemption might be granted. A symbolic blade would not allow him to do his work whereas Sikhs in several other countries are quite ok with carrying tiny representations of the blade, not the real thing.

Plus I’m pretty sure a workman would not be able to use his exemption for work purposes to explain why he was walking along the road at 11pm with his blade in full view. Even without killing someone.

Otherwise all workmen would be exempt from the normal rule of no knives down the pub. And I’m sure you don’t think they are.

My point is.

We all have to go through certain things despite being completely innocent. So I don’t mind being searched at an airport and not carrying 100ml+ of liquid because I know that it is there for the safety of all.

I think the Sikh community in this country now needs to reflect on the same. Carrying knives around is not acceptable. And I would also argue that the Scottish tradition should also be looked at.

Knife crime in this country is rife.

I'm not aware that there has ever been an incident of a Sikh stabbling someone on a plane.

It is true that if something CAN happen, it probably WILL at some point.

I'm not aware that there has ever been an incident of a Sikh stabbling someone on a plane.

Spectacularly missing the point of my post. It’s not about knives on planes. It is about us all accepting certain restrictions for the good of the population as a whole. Living in a society where we care about the whole.

they often carry the kiroans under clothing so you wouldn’t know they had them.

Well it is the point isn’t it, if it’s never happened then the risk is low. the reason liquids and so on are not allowed is because there have been incidents where they’ve been used for nefarious reasons.

So even though an 18 year old has been murdered for no reason, and died
im the street like a dog that nobody cared about, you're going to start argu8g that it’s ok because it hardly ever happens?

I’d love to know why we need to take any chance of it happening at all? It shouldn’t have happened once.

We’ve had to take off our shoes for years in airports because someone ONCE tried to bring a bomb inside a shoe. Same with liquids - how many times have planes actually been blown up using tiny quantities of liquids all added together im the plane toilets? Yet we were all massively inconvenienced for decades because of a possible threat.

I’d love to know why we need to take any chance of it happening at all? It shouldn’t have happened once.

We expect a different standard of safety on flights to other areas of life and modes of transport. If I go on a flight, my luggage and I will be scanned and there is a long list of items I am not allowed to take on the plane. If I go on a train or by bus, I will not be scanned and nor will my bags. Some of the items that are prohibited on flights are allowed on buses and trains.

We could demand the same level of safety in the streets as we have on flights, of course, but that would mean we would all have to be scanned every time we left home and face far greater restrictions on what we could carry with us. I doubt that anyone would consider that to be reasonable or acceptable.

As far as I can tell, there has been precisely one murder in the last 50 years using a knife carried for religious reasons or as part of a national costume - the murder of Henry Nowak. Over the same period, there have been well over 10,000 murders committed using hidden knives carried illegally.

I don't really have any strong opinion on whether we should allow knives to be carried for religious reasons, but I certainly think it would be a shame if we stopped Scotsmen from carrying the sgian dubh when wearing traditional Highland dress. However, if we want to stop people being murdered with knives, the focus should clearly be on stopping people carrying hidden knives illegally. Even a 1% reduction there would save far more lives than stopping people carrying knives for religious reasons or as part of national costumes.

I agree to a certain extent. I don’t see why a sgian dubh should not have to be blunt. Although adopted as national dress, many (some) Scots who wear it don’t have any Highland descent or background, anyway. I know I’m going to get into trouble for saying that, but I do think it is interesting. I knew a chap from Scotland who was dressed beautifully in the kilt for his wedding. I do think it is a lovely outfit. Likewise the Scots always have the nicest Six Nations kit. However, after a holiday in Scotland, I was chatting and said how interesting the names of the places I visited were, the ‘Fàilte’ signs, and the library in Inverness having the signs in both English and Gaelic. He made a point of saying that he didn’t know how to say any of those words. Not even Fàilte or Eilean Donan. It seemed he didn’t want to know either. It was as if he was making a statement about how alien the Highlands culture was to him. I thought that was interesting, what with his adoption of the modern interpretation of highland dress, and sgian dubh in his wedding photo. However, I can understand how it is now probably a national symbol rather than an actual heritage thing for most people.

Likewise, I don’t see why a knife worn for religious purposes should not have to be very short/ tiny, and again blunt. Or other manifestation such as a brooch/pin, as seen in many countries. It is a symbol, isn’t it?

Those who belong to the order similar to the Teutonic Knights or the Knights Templar, wouldn’t be given special exemption to wander around the streets with knives claiming they are the Christian knights of their history. So, I don’t understand why the Nihangs have to be battle ready walking the streets in their daily lives. I know people are saying that there are few attacks by someone with the Sikh religious knives. Yet, they are still banned in other countries anyway, with little, or harmless symbols being perfectly acceptable for the Sikh Communities there. Of course people are proud of their history and religious culture. However, it is obvious those can be worn and portrayed in a symbolic way as they do in other countries, rather than carrying real knives around.

Yes, if someone is going to carry a knife illegally, then they could have done it anyway. They would have to take a risk though, as if they were stopped, they would have to explain themselves to the law. They might not take the chance every day to walk around like VD. VD did not have to worry about being careful. VD was able to go around the two knives on him for religious reasons all the time, and it was because he had his big knife on him, there and then, he could attack HN and stab him to death. As he could walk around with a knife, perfectly legally, it just made it easy for him to reach for it when the inclination took him to murder HN. For any victim, it is immaterial whether he is a rare kill or not. It was a murder certainly made easier because VD could legally wander armed with a not insignificant blade.

In short, one could make the same case for people who belong to groups where violence is rare, to be exempted from safety measures which apply to others. Nobody in my family has stabbed anyone in the last 100 years at least (if ever), but we would still have to answer to the police if we were carrying knives without a good reason. As I said before, my age and demographic would make it vanishingly rare for my ‘community’ to have a propensity to stab someone to death. Yet, I would still have to answer to the police if carrying blades. The risk is always potentially there , and makes it easier for someone with bad intentions to use their weapon when they can legally carry it around. It is immaterial to the stabbing of victims, such as HN, the measures which can be taken to prevent victims of stabbings in other circumstances. Although I suspect everyone agrees it is of critical importance to try to reduce knife crime across the board, the circumstance which gave rise to easy murder of HN can be also addressed.

Excuse the stream of consciousness.

One gun attack in Scotland and handguns were effectively banned. I think the fear of attacks were carried out using liquids put together inside the plane is pretty much hypothetical: there was one FAILED attempt to do so. There can hardly be “lower risk” than something that has never happened yet”.

IMO the only way the Sikh exemption for knives could continue to be justified would be if the Sikh community had shown that they had their own procedures in place to deal with someone abusing the exemption, so that the public would not be put at risk by a rogue Sikh.

Instead it was the exact opposite: not only was this guy banned from his local temple for stealing knives and swords worth thousands without there being any concern about risk to the general public just about the loss, but footage has appeared of him threatening a driver with a sword in a road rage incident.

Again, the Sikh community took no responsibility for the fact that Sikhism is why he was armed and a threat.

So they are not prepared to, nor perhaps capable of, policing this exemption to keep people safe.

The exemption needs to go unless they can prove that they can and will do that.

Sikhism is not why he was armed. He armed himself and also happens to be a Sikh. Sikhs are not collectively responsible for other sikhs anymore than you are responsible for every other mumsnet user, or i am for every other amputee, or Catholics are all responsible for the IRA.

I never said it was ok. It’s not it’s an horrific crime and a total tragedy that needs to be thoroughly investigated to make sure things like this don’t happen again. Again, the weapon he used was NOT a kirpan, so the fact Sikhs carry kirpans has nothing to do with this incident.

This is disingenuous. Sikkhism is exactly why he was allowed to be armed.

So the judge was wrong to say that it was a ceremonial blade then?

I know it wasn't a kirpan, but I don't think that makes it much better. It could easily be argued that even if he wasn't allowed those other weapons (which is unclear because the sect that he belonged to did carry those weapons) he believed that he was allowed to, on the grounds of it being his religion;

It's not about other Sikhs being responsible for him - it's about Sikhs wanting ALL Sikhs to have these exemptions automatically, with no consideration if whether any of them pose a risk to the public.