Just so we are straight here.

You cretins dont care if your children go to school with other children that carry knives.

Knowing how emotional children can be, are you saying that sikh children possess more self control than other children?

If so you wont mind me arming my lttle fellows with bowie knives then?

Bugger it, a machete will fit in a back pack, I will insist on it along with all the other bogan parents that our children be armed to the teeth after being initiated in a pig hunt with dogs.

Pig hunting will be our religion of choice and when you leftists say you cant do that we will draw your attention to the other weapon carrying children at school.

Nice one ladies way to start an arms race! fools

CJ Morgan: "It is religions that are divisive, not multiculturalism."

But religion is part of culture.
There's just no way around this, CJ.

I don't see how anybody can defend children taking knives to school, even "ceremonial" ones.
A ceremonial knife could still be used in anger or fear, or to intimidate others, as any knife could be.

If it's merely ceremonial, with no potentially violent purpose, why not make kirpans out of paper, plastic or rubber?
(At least the ones for the kiddies.
"My First Kirpan" by Mattel.)

Why is it one rule for the religious (or more accurately, the "ethnic"), another for the rest?
If Sikhs can wear concealed weapons, so should anybody.
If nobody else can, neither should Sikhs.

It wouldn't matter in a Sikh community in the Punjab.
*Everybody* would have concealed knives.
It would be a shock if somebody didn't!

It matters when those cultural norms are applied elsewhere.
In a culture with different expectations about children carrying knives.

Are 13-year-old Jewish schoolboys permitted to make their own decisions about school attendance (they're adults according to their religion), while the remainder of their class must compulsorily attend school until they're 15?

Consistency never was your strong point Boaz, was it?

I seem to recall that at every opportunity, you will explain to the world how Muslims have to be violent towards Christians simply because a verse in their scripture says so. No deviation, no compromise, it has to be, because the scripture says so. Right?

In this case, however, you studiously ignore the entire rationale for the Kirpan, simply so that you can denigrate someone else's religion. It doesn't seem to matter to you that in doing so you display the duplicity that you have made your trademark.

As I am certain you must be aware, here's Wikipedia's take:

"The kirpan has both a physical function, as a defensive weapon, as well as a symbolic function. Physically it is an instrument of "Ahimsa" or non-violence. The principle of ahimsa is to actively prevent violence, not to simply stand by idly whilst violence is being done. To that end, the kirpan is a tool to be used to prevent violence from being done to a defenseless person when all other means to do so have failed. Symbolically, the kirpan represents the power of truth to cut through untruth. It is the cutting edge of the enlightened mind."

You would also be aware that there have been no incidents of violence in Australia featuring the Kirpan. Quite possibly, because it is not an offensive weapon...

But what is becoming really, really tedious - even more tedious than your pick 'n' mix approach to religious scriptures - is the way you segue any item with the faintest religious connotation into a whack-a-mozzie rant.

I know you won't stop doing it. But I'll be right behind you, pointing out the arrant hypocrisy of your stance..

CJ, perhaps the thread should have been titled "Freedom of Religion the ongoing madness".

I'm not sure that all children will understand the nuance which explains other children being allowed to bring a knife to school for religious purposes and them not being able to bring one for their own purposes.

I'd like to see outward expressions of religion kept at bay in our schools but at the same time I'd rather have kids from different backgrounds mixing in schools rather than being segregated out into religion specific schools. There is no easy balance in that.

R0bert

Boaz,
Thanks for informing us of this latest cultural 'cave in'. One hopes it is only a committee recomendation and their is enough outcry for the Government to shelve it. It should be up to each school committee to decide on school uniforms, not to be told a certain item of clothing must be acceptable. Knives of any description, for whatever purpose definately should not be allowed.

When such decisions are made, and Governments turn a blind eye to FGM, forced arranged marriages, cultural peadapjillia and incest it compromises our own cultural standards.

Scotty,
Don't just single out Labor for stupudity on immigration matters, the Libs are equally so.

Take the last piece of Boaz's post. He makes a vital point. For many decades we have relied purely on word of mouth to give prospective immigrants information about our society. Official info was given only to those who were successfull in getting a visa. They had already made up their minds and committed. Only in the last few months has moves been made to give those applying for a visa information about our culture and society. My last inquiry revealed this material was being printed. I sincerely hope that the new Minister keeps on with this as it it vital that prospective immigrants are adequately informed BEFORE they ultimately decide to come to Aus.

Their friends here want them to come so they will paint a rosy picture and say things like FGM is against the law but keep it quiet and nobody cares and the same with eating prohibited foods, like dog meat or dolphin. Migrants must get the proper information.

.R0bert, I think that allowing a category of kids to take even concealed symbolic weapons into a school is stupid policy.

My point is that we probably wouldn't see this idiocy if the Howard government hadn't insidiously introduced religion into the national education debate, e.g. via introducing the (Christian) chaplaincy program.

The priviileged bureaucratic treatment of one religion over others was always going to provoke protests from adherents of other mythologies on equity grounds. I can imagine that Sikh parents sending their kids to public schools that celebrate Christian chaplaincy might be inclined to encourage their kids to assert being Sikh. Ditto with Muslims.

I say this in the context of having declined in the past week an invitation to attend a morning tea to celebrate the "commissioning" of the Christian chaplain at my youngest daughter's State school. I didn't go because I thought it would be hypocritical, given that my daughter has excluded herself on her own volition from religious education classes.

I've always thought that the former government's blatant promotion of Christianity via the Chaplaincy program would provoke a backlash from those who suffer the God delusion in alternative ways. The funding should have been directed towards secular counsellors, or more teachers and/or teachers' aides.

Shocka - of course religion is an element of culture, but you don't seem to understand that its expression is very dependent on the particularities of the cultural milieu in which it is practised. Islam in Lakemba is as culturally different to its expression in, say Saudi Arabia or Sumatra, as Hillsong Christianity is to Egyptian Copts or Fijian Methodists.

Culture isn't fixed - it's actually both cause and effect. No culture is static, as neither indeed is any religion.