Oh Canada, poor poor Canada.

I am on record, on this very blog, as being fore square against the blind idiotic zero tolerance policies in effect in our schools. 7 year-olds being suspended for giving someone they like a peck on the cheek, high school baseball players getting kicked out of school for leaving their baseball bat in the trunk of their car and other innumerable cases highlight a system that is completely devoid of common sense.

However, I’m not so sure kids should be allowed to bring 8 inch daggers into school. The Canadian courts have come down saying that the tenants of multiculturalism trump, not only zero tolerance policies but even common sense, by saying that orthodox Sikh students are able to carry deadly weapons with them, to and from classes.

This 7 inch Kirpan is okay, just so long as you are a Sikh. You are a Sikh, right?
Whoa. That’s nuts. Bending the rules, to appease a religious minority, allowing their rules to supercede those of society at large is a foolish move. If a Sikh can bring a dagger into class, on the grounds that it’s an obligation of their religion then you have created a precedent that gives an Islamist student grounds to demand that girls be removed from the schools because it’s against their religion. You have opened the door to fire and brimstone Christian fundamentalists to demand there be a bible study class where the non Christian students are informed that they will be going to Hell. Jews can demand Kosher meats which will become a moot request after Hindu’s demand no meat.

By not sticking to a secular based school system the Canadian courts may wake up one day to find their schools not a place of education, but rather a battle ground of religious extremes. Oh ya, and just who decides who is, or isn’t, an orthodox Sikh? Perhaps the school will have to establish an Office of Religious Purity.