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MONTREAL, CANADA, April 4, 2002: A Sikh family here will soon test the boundaries of religious tolerance with a court battle to win permission for their 12-year-old son to wear his spiritually significant dagger to school. Quebec’s Superior Court will take up the issue next week and its decision will set a legal precedent for the province. The issue of whether the dagger, known as a kirpan, should be considered a weapon when brought into schools surfaced nearly ten years ago both in Quebec and the neighboring province of Ontario. In the early 1990s, Ontario’s Court of Appeal upheld a previous ruling affirming the right of students and teachers to wear the Sikh ceremonial daggers. The ruling allowed them to carry kirpans in school so long as they were concealed and secured underneath their clothing. Other schools have succeeded in convincing young Sikhs to carry a token kirpan – a pendant, perhaps, or something made of plastic — to avoid its possible use in school as a weapon. The parents of young Gurbaj Singh reject a replacement, saying it goes against their religion. Gurbaj has worn his kirpan at all times since his baptism and it was only late last year when it fell out that teachers realized he carried one. For the past four months, intercultural specialists, community members and lawyers have held talks aimed at reaching an equitable arrangement over the issue and failed. According to the family’s lawyer, the Singh family would agree to have the kirpan wrapped and sewn inside clothing but a token dagger was unacceptable. So far, Gurbaj has neither attended school nor taken the private lessons authorized by the school board while the issue was being discussed.

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