Sikh and Ye Shall Find

Recently the Garda Síochána (the police) attracted some controversy for disallowing a Sikh applicant to the force from wearing his turban while on duty. Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy has stated that the Garda uniform is standard for everybody, despite, as one article said, "asking a Sikh to take off his turban is like asking him to take off his head." Which is a strange thing to say. But however one words it, the strict adherence to the Garda's uniform code effectively prohibits any Sikhs from joining up, because their own religion prohibits them from removing the turban. Elsewhere, the Minister for Integration, Conor Lenihan, has himself drawn fire for publicly supporting Conroy's decision.

Critics claim that forcing a certain group to abandon their cultural practices to conform to Irish standards is hardly "integration." And it certainly seems unfair to mark a man as ineligible to serve in the police because of a piece of cloth wrapped around his head. But the Garda is a state body, not a cultural potluck. The uniform is standard because the people that wear it are supposed to serve everyone; the Garda can't really be for or against religion, it cannot be of religion at all.

That's why the cries of 'discrimination' are a little hard to take seriously. What's really threatening to the pious objectors may be the assertion that there are places where religion doesn't apply. People like Southern Baptists freak out when it is suggested to them that the Ten Commandments cannot be displayed in secular institutions, because to them there is no concept of 'secular': God, after all, is everywhere, and so religion may straddle any barrier and invade any space. It's the same thinking at work here. It's also a great racket, something religious leaders must really be quietly praising: they can comment on anything, scrutinize any human action, sit back and judge it all with free license, simply because they've convinced everyone else that their imaginary friend really talks to them.

Really, taken in any other context than religion, the things it makes people do and say and wear would be immediately pointed out as ridiculous, irrational, even dangerous. I remember reading a letter in the Evening Herald that voiced its approval of the ban...because the letter-writer was Muslim and claimed that the Sikh religion was originally created to wipe out all Muslims. Total nonsense.

I mean...for a while I've balked at the idea of criticizing someone's religious belief. But maybe Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and that crowd had convinced me otherwise. There really is a massive taboo in place on pointing out just how goofy religion is and how destructive it can be, without a convincing reason as to why that taboo exists. Not even belief in magic and ghosts gets the same protection. Well, let's face it, believing in horoscopes or palm reading and believing in religion produce the same ends: a lot of wasted energy on the demonstration of some bizarre thoughts. What's positive about communities coming together in churches or temples has nothing to do with religion at all: people tend to gather together pretty much anywhere they are, and it's generally accepted that people should act good towards their fellow man. No authority need tell you that. The belief that Mary conceived while still a virgin does nothing to help you out. Your life is improved by a factor of zero when you learn that Samson killed an entire army platoon with the jawbone of an ass. Devoting your life to Jesus forces you to turn your back on the real live people on this planet that exist in the present and might need some help of their own.

So anyways.

All-in-all, the issue comes off just like the question of flag burning in the States: it induces a lot of passion; despite this, it's largely irrelevant in its own right; it is, however, demonstrative of bigger problems. As Martina Devlin in the Irish Independent said (in an editorial a lot more coherent than I could hope to write):

What this free-for-all about turbans on the beat does illustrate is our lack of a coherent policy. The question should have been addressed back at the start, before the reserve was selected and trained, instead of turning him into a test case now. Our society is in a state of flux and we need to draw up policies in a coherent fashion -- not on an individual basis.

Yes, it appears silly to be so obstinately against something so inconsequential. There are, after all, a grand total of 1,200 Sikhs in Ireland, and I'm sure there are other things they are doing besides applying to be part of the Garda. However, standards must be set when it comes to immigrants and their relationship with their host country. Going at it case-by-case, circumstantially, isn't fair, and it isn't democratic.

Ireland is running a narrow gauntlet at present when it comes to its new immigrant population. If it fails to integrate these folks, it risks becoming either like Britain, with a ton of foreign communities that have almost nothing to do with the society at large, or like France, where an open animus exists and occasional race riots are a given. But Ireland seems to be learning from others' mistakes well, and there's actually a chance that things might work out fine. That would be wonderful.