Blunt Daggers, Veils, and Other Existential Threats to Canadians' Comfort

The Sikh kirpan is a gateway religious symbol that will lead to mass squeamishness.

The Globe and Mail condemns Quebec’s National Assembly for barring four Sikh men from hearings on reasonable accommodation because they attempted to enter the chamber while wearing ceremonial daggers, arguing that “[t]o bar those who observe minority religions such as Sikhism is to render the committee’s work incomplete and, frankly, ridiculous from the start.” The paper’s right, because if you can’t even figure out a way to get minorities in the same room as you for a discussion about minority rights, the discussion is hopeless. This isn’t to say that the daggers (called kirpans) should necessarily be allowed in the legislature in The Newsroom's opinion, but the fact that no one anticipated that the men would show up wearing the daggers, a religiously mandated article of their faith, is unbelievable.

The National Post’s Barbara Kay says that on this issue, for once Quebec has got something right. And that’s fine, we can understand why it’s unreasonable to expect weapons of any kind to be allowed into government buildings. But Kay’s reasoning is ludicrous. Security is not the issue, she says, “[t]he real worry is … that if you allow a harmless symbol that looks like a weapon to be worn, there will be no grounds to refuse other so-called religious symbols that are more ideological statements than talismans of faith.” Allowing the kirpan, Kay implies, would mean validating the niqab and other “political ‘messaging’ tool[s]” that in “critical masses, [act] as a socially aggressive threat to the comfort of other[s].”

If eliminating “social threats” is Kay’s aim, she must at least acknowledge that the four men were denied entry on false pretenses, because the metal detector they set off was not equipped to detect social threats, but knives and guns. And if she admits security is not the issue, she must explain why the kirpan is more dangerous a symbol than a yarmulke or a crucifix. She doesn’t advocate banning these familiar symbols of course, because they do not violate her right to “comfort” (a right that does not exist). To set a vague concept like one’s own comfort as the legal standard for barring religious symbols is not only unenforceable, but a recipe for institutionalized xenophobia.