philosoraptor42

Okay, there's a new story about a member of a religion complaining about intolerance based on their choice of clothing. A Jedi has been ejected from Tesco for wearing a hood. Daniel Jones, who prefers to be known as "Jedi Master Morda Hehol" is a leading Holyhead Jedi in the Anglesey Jedi Church. They have a website and have made (preliminary) plans to establish a base on the moon.

Just when you thought Jedi Knights were the keepers of peace and order in the galaxy, Tesco has all but branded them nothing more than common hoodies.

Morda Hehol, 23 – known in his spare time as Daniel Jones – accused the supermarket of religious discrimination after he was banned for refusing to remove his hood.

Members of the Star Wars faith, a global religion, choose to wear their hoods in public.

But Master Morda, leader of the UK’s first Jedi Church, was branded a security risk by supermarket staff and ejected from the premises in Bangor, North Wales.

He said he would advise other Jedis to boycott Tesco if this happened again, adding that “they will feel the force.”

“I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone,” said Morda.

The handbook of the UK Jedi Church states: “Jedis must wear a hood up in any public place of a large audience.”

But a spokesman for Tesco said: “We would ask Jedis to remove hoods.  “Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all went hoodless without going to the Dark Side.”

Clearly, when Yoda said, “Luke, when gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be,” he was not banking on the religion flourishing a long time ahead in a galaxy far far away.   (Daily Dust)

( Five other examples of religious clothing disputes in the UK... )


So anyway, Topless Robot first alerted me to the Jedi Knight story and he begins his article as follows:
Okay. You know how a bunch of people went and made "Jedi" an official religion in England?

*BEEP!* Sorry, incorrect.

It was believed that if enough people wrote down their religion as Jedi on the census it would become an official religion in the UK. The fact is that all it did was make Jedi a recognised thing that people write down in the 'religion' section of the census.

This is the official line: the Census does not provide recognition to any religion in the official statistics nor does it attempt to define religion. The list that you can see by checking out the pdf file above is merely a list of possible answers that people have been known to put in the box marked religion.

As such, Jedi Knight is not officially recognised as a religion.

This is the same situation that Scientology is currently in within the UK. It has never been recognised as a religion in the UK and even failed to receive charitable status when it applied for it. This was noted during the odd scenario where a protester was given a written warning by the police for holding up a sign during a protest referring to Scientology as a dangerous cult. What was even more absurd was how, even after this had been cleared up at the London event, the same mistake took place again in Glasgow and again in Birmingham. In any case, these were all judged to be mistakes and scientology can be freely and publically referred to as a cult because legally it is.

Anyway, first of all I'd note that the Jedi religion does not have a long history of wearing their hoods down in public, not least since they only established their church about 5 years ago. Secondly I'd note that they don't really have much excuse for setting up such a tradition in the current setting. But the best rebuttal amusingly came from Tesco themselves:

'He hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

'Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood.

'If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.'

x-posted to atheism

While previously all you could find were four short clips on youtube, the entirity of the finished 'Sita Sings The Blues' is now available here:
http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/indies/indie-sita-sings-the-blues/241/

The actual animation doesn't start until about 6 minutes in. The story of Ramayana doesn't begin until 7 munutes and that's where it starts getting fun (though the intro does look damn shiny too).

As you can imagine from the title, the point of this animation is to emphasis Sita's part of the story, since she is normally seen as a bit player and rather undermined. 11 minutes in the awesome animation you might know from Youtube starts up. Oh my goodness it's so cool!

So anyway, I understand that this is only online for a limited time - so check it out now you fool!

There's been a new conflict between religion and the state. This time it isn't a terrorist attack or even an offensive stageplay or book. This time the state wants to destroy a religious group's object of worship.

The object of worship is a bull.
The bull has TB.

But this bull ain't goin' nowhere without a fight!




The Guardian article gives up-to-the-minute news of what is happening to the bull.  There is something rather farscical about the whole thing:

I just wish I knew a bit more about the health threat. The best I've been able to find is this:

"They will be obliged to reconsider the public health objectives that underlie the surveillance and slaughter policy, and come to a view as to whether, in the reasonable pursuit of those objectives, the slaughter of this animal - or some less intrusive measure - would be proportional given the serious infringement of the community's rights ... that slaughter would involve," he said. The judge said the danger to humans from bovine TB was "particularly small" and the risk to other animals was minimised by isolating the bull.

This is from an old article where the judge was prepared to allow Shambo's case a little more consideration and to cancel the then-current orders to have Shambo slaughtered. It seems, however, that this didn't last. Anyway, I reckon I'm probably in favour of the slaughter of Shambo and it seems like the Hindu traditions have not been ignored. I thought people would find this entertaining nonetheless.