When Kirpans Kill: how dangerous are Sikh knives?
A Sikh TikTok influencer alleging racial profiling after being asked to leave a gym while wearing a kirpan, has reignited the Sikh dagger debate. Here’s the times the kirpan was used as a weapon.
After a Sikh influencer recorded himself getting kicked out of a Goodlife Fitness in Windsor, Ontario, for carrying a visible Sikh dagger into the gym, the debate about Sikhs having a religious exemption to carry a blade around has reignited.
In 2006, the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged that the Sikh kirpan could be used to cause injury, but ultimately ruled that “the kirpan is not a weapon, but a religious object,” ruling that some restrictions were warranted but an outright ban on the dagger would constitute an unreasonable limit on Sikhs’ right to religious freedom.
The court ruling found that there had been no violent incidents involving the kirpan in the century that Sikhs have been carrying them to classes. Juno News has compiled a list of times that the Sikhs’ religious knife was used or threatened to be used as a weapon and not simply a religious symbol.
