Ireland should not allow police to wear turbans

There are a couple of good pieces from the Irish Independent on the ongoing row over whether an Sikh recruit to the Irish police force should be allowed to wear a turban instead of the standard issue police cap. So far, the Garda have said there should be no exceptions to the uniform but there are ominous signs that they may be reviewing their policy.

Minister of State Conor Lenihan backed the police saying:

If we're to take integration seriously, people who come here must understand our way of doing things. When the President and Ministers travel to the Middle East, they accept cultural requirements of the country and the culture they are operating in. It is a vice versa situation with regard to Ireland.

As this editorial pointed out, by granting special status you hinder the cause of integration because then everyone else wants special status too.

If the uniform requirements of the Garda Reserve were to be waived for a Sikh officer, then they would have to be waived for everyone else who pleaded cultural or religious custom. Male Jewish officers would be allowed to wear the yamulke instead of the cap; female Muslim officers (if their husbands allowed them out) would wear the veil instead of the cap; some might even cover their uniforms with a burqa. Buddhist members (although I'm not sure if their beliefs would allow them to join a force which might be required to use even limited violence against violence) would be able to wear a yellow robe. The possibilities are numerous, and while they might make for a more colourful air around the Phoenix Park and Harcourt Square, it would be the end of uniformity and the discipline it both implies and requires.

Even more to the point, it would further endorse our skewed version of multi-culturalism. The idea of having people of various cultural traditions and ethnic minorities in our defence and garda forces is to ensure integration, not reinforce difference.

In the same newspaper, Martina Devlin made a similar point a few days later:

Agree to one special case and you open a Pandora's Box. Next up: police issue burkas for female Muslim reserves. Powder blue uniforms for those with an aesthetic reaction against navy. And high heels for anyone who says the standard brogues make their ankles look fat.

She goes on to make an unfavourable comparison with the UK.

I always thought the London Metropolitan Police made a grave mistake -- and has stored up trouble for itself -- in excusing a Muslim officer from duty outside the Israeli Embassy.

Yet the Met Police is being waved at us by Sikh community spokespeople as an example of a force we should emulate.

The argument that Britain allows Sikhs to wear turbans as part of their police uniform is irrelevant. That's akin to contending we should have a royal family because Britain has one. And this "Britain does it" line of reasoning highlights something rather worrying.

It shows a certain assimilation failure among the Irish-based Sikh leaders calling for us to follow Britain's lead. It's no secret the one sure way to get an Irish person's hackles up is to tell them they should do something because Britain does it.

Haven't they worked that out yet? We should welcome people from around the world to our country. They have much to contribute and we have much to learn from them.

But we can't have them laying down the rules in the host nation -- they must assimilate. By all means maintain their indigenous cultures, but adapt to ours too.

Of course, Britain opened that Pandora's Box many years ago when Sikhs were first allowed to ride motorbikes without crash helmets and to work on building sites without hard hats. Their heads are no harder than anyone else's but health and safety, it seems, took second place to religious feeling.

This reflects our peculiar attitude to cultural minorities which, as I have said before, is a legacy of the Empire. The British establishment would prefer to do deals with the leaders of minority groups than ask them to integrate.

The Met, with its fourteen different minority pressure groups and its concessions to religious demands, is hardly a model to emulate either.

The Irish have seen where this leads and most of them don't want to go there. They know, from watching what has happened in the UK, that a concession to turban-wearing Sikhs will lead to demands for veils,  jilbabs and chastity rings in schools and to endless disputes over religious jewellery and attire in the workplace.

Police forces have uniforms for a reason. The minute they start allowing modifications to that uniform to accommodate someone's deeply held beliefs, the uniform and the discipline that goes with it is undermined.

It is up to those with religious beliefs to make sacrifices. The police recruit must make a choice. Is strict religious observance more important to him than being a police officer? He can't have both. It is not the state's responsibility to accommodate his beliefs.

Ireland should learn from Britain's mistakes and stand firm on this issue. As Martina Devlin sums it up; if you don't like the rules, then don't play the game.

Comments

[bhaaji singh]

If the UN can allow Sikh soldiers to wear turbans while on duty as UN peacekeeping forces, why can't everyone else?

Check images of Sikhs wearing turban in UN peackeeping forces. http://www.sikhnet.com/sikhnet/news.nsf/NewsArchive/8351A4C5B5C70A54872571DB00676086

[Rastaman]

The UN is not a legitimate body. In fact, a growing number of apparently sane and well-balanced people believe that the UN is a form of street theater secretly conducted by Hollywood Leftists for their own private amusement. Certainly, the UN never actually DOES anything other than to issue edicts which no one follows and to condemn everything anyone on the Right does.
UN Sikhs in turbans is great Hollywood flair. Really. Nice touch. Good-o.

Come on, BJ, do you really expect anyone to buy into your comparison of the UN with an actual functioning government?

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[chachi]

bhaaji, it doesn't matter what these tossers think, it'll happen in the end, it's money that talks, and sikhs have plenty of clout in that department, money,money,money.... thats the ever changing way of the west.

[Steve]

Chachi - your point about love of money being the West's weakness is a good one. However, even the Sikhs don't have enough money to flout the law. If we banned turbans on motorbikes, they'd just have to live with it.

[Rastaman]

Take a bike helmet. Wrap a turban around it. Dip it in fiberglas resin. Allow to harden. Wear.

Rasta

[chachi]

steve, you'd be suprised, put it this way, you couldn't measure the success of a sikh owned business by examining the books, they've spent too much time in the kitchen.
"If we banned turbans on motorbikes, they'd just have to live with it."
"IF"... thats my point, "if" wouldn't happen.