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