Hi Foxy,

One case ? Eight years ago ? Gosh. How many kids have been pulled up for carrying knives or guns in Canada or Australia since then, I wonder ?

Still, probably more than the number of people who have been threatened violently by crosses. Says an atheist.

Joe

Dear Joe,

You're wise to stay out of the way of kirpans,
crosses, boomerangs, spears, and any other sharp
religious object - Sister Mary Virgilius was a
holy terror with her rosaries in my school.
But then you could always get hit by lightening.

A gentleman in Highland dress traditionally carries a sgian-dubh - a single-bladed dagger tucked into the hose (on the same side as your dominant hand). I don't see that as being much different to carrying a kirpan, so it wouldn't be fair to ban one and not the other.

The Scots won't like it if you try to take their sgian-dubhs and I wouldn't want to try it. The Scots have a well-deserved reputation for fierceness.

//Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a Sikh wearing one.//

How many Sikhs have you seen? If they're baptised, it is a religious requirement for them to carry one but I don't think they're required to display it.

//Wait a minute: would Sikh boys wear daggers to school ? Wouldn't it have to be a sort of manhood symbol, a bar mitzvah sort of thing where they got their daggers as a symbol of their new standing as protectors, at fifteen or sixteen//

They're supposed to carry it after their baptism, or Amrit Sanchar. Apparently a Sikh can go through Amrit Sanchar at any age, but I would assume there are certain cultural conventions that dictate when people do. I don't know because I'm not a Sikh and wikipedia has scant information on the subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirpan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrit_Sanchar

In places where the religious requirement to carry a dagger comes hard up against the civil requirement not to carry weapons (civilians shouldn't be allowed to have weapons in court, but some American states have ruled that banning kirpans is unconstitutional), Sikhs have come up with a solution that I think is pure genius: they bolt the kirpan into its sheath so that it can't be drawn. This satisfies the requirement to carry one, whilst rendering it entirely harmless. Brilliant.

Fox,

What about Sikh girls? The Five Ks apply to both sexes. Do you have sleepless nights fussing about what they must have hidden in their drawers too?

Dear Toni,

A truly brillian idea - if the kirpan was sealed or
secured so that it could not be physically removed -
it would be rendered harmless and not a problem.

Although kids being kids ...

Ho, hum, a kirpan is not a dagger, and it would be difficult to find anything less daggerish in the real knife world.

A dagger has a straight sharp pointed blade, a kirpan is usually curved.