At one level, is this amusing? Absolutely. At another level, is this a double standard with less than amusing implications obscured by its amusing element? You bet.
“Tesco discriminate against Jedi,” by Edgar Allan McAbe at The Morning Starr, September 18:
A Tesco supermarket in Bangor, North Wales has been accused of religious discrimination after they ejected a Jedi from their store because he wouldn’t remove his hood.
23 year old Daniel Jones, also known as Morda Hehol, founded the Church of Jediism in January 2008. The Jediism Handbook clearly states that all Jedi “must wear a hood up in any public place of a large audience; this shows symbolism of your faith”.
Morda Hehol…was accosted by three members of Tesco staff who ordered him to remove his head covering or leave the shop. Even when the Jedi explained that his religion commanded that he must wear a hood in public the three staff members simply sniggered and then ejected him from the building.
In a statement given to the press, Tesco were unrepentant:
“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.”
Besides completely missing the point, Tesco don’t have this policy for other religious groups. Whilst in the supermarket Morda Hehol witnessed at least one Muslim woman wearing a veil, she was not asked to remove it.
And that’s the point. If the “veil” in question was a headscarf, Hehol’s hood is arguably a permissible equivalent. If the “veil” in question was a burqa, Hehol’s hood is less likely to conceal stolen goods or weapons, light sabers notwithstanding.
Barring reasonable suspicion of threat, if the veil is acceptable, so is the hood. This applies whether the hood is donned for religious or for other reasons. If the hood or the hood wearer must be removed, the same should apply for equivalent headscarves and headscarf wearers, to say nothing of full-fledged burqas, which have a demonstrable history of dangerous and unsavory uses.