‘To have that happen to me, I felt embarrassed, I felt discriminated against, I didn’t expect it to happen to me.”
Why feel discriminated against ? You brought in a weapon to a court and the security guard did his job, I.e no weapons.
Your religion doesn’t trump everyone’s rights. Seems like another look at me attempt, get over it.
Didn’t realise getting out of jury service was that easy… time to become Sikh.
This is beyond ridiculous. It is so embarrassing to be a part of this country these days.
[deleted]
A Kirpan is a dagger not a fucking sword. Fuck sake I learned this 20 years ago at school in Birmingham. Its part of the five K’s of their religion.
I would not feel like I could fairly deliver my opinion if I knew there was a weapon in the room. Jury’s can potentially become heated and stressful. He should not be allowed to bring the blade.
Wait so I read it, he could bring a kirpan in (sword) that is less than 6 inches long… they actually let people bring in weapons? I understand the sikhs can’t go around without it, which carrying a blade aside, surely at some point the sensible thing to do is to make them exempt from jury duty unless they choose to put it down, or carry a blunted version or something. Can you get on a plane with one on your person? Seems kind of mad you can walk into a court house with a blade at all.
Some cant even be removed form the scabbard, even then they are blunt. Idiots
Sikhs are the first to help when disaster strikes. I have volunteered in disaster food kitchens for years. They always arrive with food, volunteers, and patience. They stay till the end and never want recognition.
Jesus, when did this sub get filled with BNP types? The comments in this thread are fucking embarrassing
Religious people should be barred from jury anyway.
Good! Fucking hell, this country is an absolute joke but at least this feels remotely sensible for a change. If you need to carry a stupid fucking sword, don’t expect to carry out your public duty.
The law allows him to attend jury service while carrying the Kirpan. The company providing security is at fault for not training their employees.
What a tool. Why’d you carry a sword to a court? Should your religion be accommodated to allow carrying of a sword on a plane?
Imagine a white person turning up to court with a sword. I think this country may be a little to lenient with these religious freedoms.
Back when I studied Sikhism at school 15 years ago, we were taught that many practicing Sikhs in the west had moved to carrying symbolic representations of the kirpan, such as necklaces that resembled the traditional blade.
So, while I understand the religious and cultural importance of having the kirpan on one’s body, and the strict rules surrounding its use… you still don’t carry a blade around with you. There are alternatives that still respect the faith.
Absurd! When was the last Kirpan crime in the news? None for which I remember
Why should somebody be permitted to take a weapon into court because religion? We need to stop bending over backwards and accommodating people who still refuse to join modern times and leave things like mystical sky Daddy in the past
Kirpan’s are allowed through airport security though.
*Discriminated against*?
I absolutely support the facts that Sikhs have religious exemptions for carrying the kirpan (and as someone else already covered the MoJ specifically allow it provided under a certain size) – even though I think religions are outdated primitive nonsense (Sikhism and its adherents absolutely being among the best though)…
… but he arguably wasn’t being *discriminated* against – even if this guards action was wrong – since no-one else would have been allowed a weapon and that exemption.
What he wasn’t being allowed was his *special* exemption.
(Arguably?
Well this gets a bit more subtle: the guard may still have been choosing to single him out because he was discriminating against him on the basis of ethnicity – he may have been a racist basically.
But that’s hard to prove. Certainly given obvious argument that, in the absence of knowing about the exemption (training?), that he was simply not discriminating but thought he was doing his job…)
I dont rate any sort of religious exemptions for anything
You shouldn’t be allowed to break a law that everyone else is expected to follow just because your special book says so.
I’m sorry, but a 10cm ceremonial knife is being called a sword. You may as well call a potato gun an AK-47.
Alright.
I mean just practically speaking carrying a dagger into something like jury service sounds incredibly unsensible.
Religion causing issues again. Don’t take a weapon into a court room and then you can be on the jury. Easy really.
Never heard of this before and seems like a massive loophole people are carrying around bigger than legal knives for religious reasons
>Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3) above, it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (2) above to prove that he had the article or weapon in question with him—
(a)for use at work,
(b)for educational purposes,
(c)for religious reasons, or
(d)as part of any national costume.
It has been a legal exemption for Sikhs for at least 35 years. People finding out about it just now might want to take a moment to consider that if they’re only just discovering that Sikhs have been carrying knives all that time, then perhaps it’s not really the huge problem they are making it out to be.
26 comments
‘To have that happen to me, I felt embarrassed, I felt discriminated against, I didn’t expect it to happen to me.”
Why feel discriminated against ? You brought in a weapon to a court and the security guard did his job, I.e no weapons.
Your religion doesn’t trump everyone’s rights. Seems like another look at me attempt, get over it.
Didn’t realise getting out of jury service was that easy… time to become Sikh.
This is beyond ridiculous. It is so embarrassing to be a part of this country these days.
[deleted]
A Kirpan is a dagger not a fucking sword. Fuck sake I learned this 20 years ago at school in Birmingham. Its part of the five K’s of their religion.
I would not feel like I could fairly deliver my opinion if I knew there was a weapon in the room. Jury’s can potentially become heated and stressful. He should not be allowed to bring the blade.
Wait so I read it, he could bring a kirpan in (sword) that is less than 6 inches long… they actually let people bring in weapons? I understand the sikhs can’t go around without it, which carrying a blade aside, surely at some point the sensible thing to do is to make them exempt from jury duty unless they choose to put it down, or carry a blunted version or something. Can you get on a plane with one on your person? Seems kind of mad you can walk into a court house with a blade at all.
Some cant even be removed form the scabbard, even then they are blunt. Idiots
Sikhs are the first to help when disaster strikes. I have volunteered in disaster food kitchens for years. They always arrive with food, volunteers, and patience. They stay till the end and never want recognition.
Jesus, when did this sub get filled with BNP types? The comments in this thread are fucking embarrassing
Religious people should be barred from jury anyway.
Good! Fucking hell, this country is an absolute joke but at least this feels remotely sensible for a change. If you need to carry a stupid fucking sword, don’t expect to carry out your public duty.
The law allows him to attend jury service while carrying the Kirpan. The company providing security is at fault for not training their employees.
What a tool. Why’d you carry a sword to a court? Should your religion be accommodated to allow carrying of a sword on a plane?
Imagine a white person turning up to court with a sword. I think this country may be a little to lenient with these religious freedoms.
Back when I studied Sikhism at school 15 years ago, we were taught that many practicing Sikhs in the west had moved to carrying symbolic representations of the kirpan, such as necklaces that resembled the traditional blade.
So, while I understand the religious and cultural importance of having the kirpan on one’s body, and the strict rules surrounding its use… you still don’t carry a blade around with you. There are alternatives that still respect the faith.
Absurd! When was the last Kirpan crime in the news? None for which I remember
Why should somebody be permitted to take a weapon into court because religion? We need to stop bending over backwards and accommodating people who still refuse to join modern times and leave things like mystical sky Daddy in the past
Kirpan’s are allowed through airport security though.
*Discriminated against*?
I absolutely support the facts that Sikhs have religious exemptions for carrying the kirpan (and as someone else already covered the MoJ specifically allow it provided under a certain size) – even though I think religions are outdated primitive nonsense (Sikhism and its adherents absolutely being among the best though)…
… but he arguably wasn’t being *discriminated* against – even if this guards action was wrong – since no-one else would have been allowed a weapon and that exemption.
What he wasn’t being allowed was his *special* exemption.
(Arguably?
Well this gets a bit more subtle: the guard may still have been choosing to single him out because he was discriminating against him on the basis of ethnicity – he may have been a racist basically.
But that’s hard to prove. Certainly given obvious argument that, in the absence of knowing about the exemption (training?), that he was simply not discriminating but thought he was doing his job…)
I dont rate any sort of religious exemptions for anything
You shouldn’t be allowed to break a law that everyone else is expected to follow just because your special book says so.
I’m sorry, but a 10cm ceremonial knife is being called a sword. You may as well call a potato gun an AK-47.
Alright.
I mean just practically speaking carrying a dagger into something like jury service sounds incredibly unsensible.
Religion causing issues again. Don’t take a weapon into a court room and then you can be on the jury. Easy really.
Never heard of this before and seems like a massive loophole people are carrying around bigger than legal knives for religious reasons
This thread is so full of ignorant people, [Criminal Justice Act 1988](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/33/section/139A) spells it out very clearly.
>Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3) above, it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (2) above to prove that he had the article or weapon in question with him—
(a)for use at work,
(b)for educational purposes,
(c)for religious reasons, or
(d)as part of any national costume.
It has been a legal exemption for Sikhs for at least 35 years. People finding out about it just now might want to take a moment to consider that if they’re only just discovering that Sikhs have been carrying knives all that time, then perhaps it’s not really the huge problem they are making it out to be.