[JURIST] Sir Mota Singh QC, Britain’s first Asian judge, said in an interview with BBC’s Asian Network Monday that Sikhs should be permitted to wear their ceremonial daggers to school and other public places. Sikhism requires that Sikh males wear the ceremonial dagger, known as a kirpan, at all times, but they are forbidden to use it as a weapon. Sir Mota, who is now retired, made his comments following several recent high-profile cases in which Sikhs have been asked to remove their kirpans, turbans, and other religious garb in the workplace or school. In October, a British employment tribunal awarded a Sikh policeman £10,000 for indirect racial and religious discrimination and harassment after he was ordered to remove his turban during riot training. Also last year, a boy was forced to leave the Compton School in Barnet, north London for wearing a kirpan. His family has not yet brought a discrimination claim against the school. In 2008, the British High Court ruled in favor of 14-year-old Sarika Singh after she was disciplined by her school for wearing a steel bangle, a symbol of Sikh faith called a Kara, breaking the school’s “no jewelry” rule.
Sir Mota’s comments come in the context of years of international tension over the wearing of religious dress. In 2007, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) revised security procedures relating to headwear, after Sikhs criticized the potential for religious profiling. In 2006, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a Quebec school board’s ban on carrying Sikh ceremonial daggers at school, ruling that it infringed students’ religious freedom under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The French Conseil d’Etat held in 2006 that Sikhs have to remove their turbans to be photographed for driver’s licenses as a matter of public security.