Jedi Rights.

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The Denial of Jedi Rights and Privileges

Equity demands that all religions should be treated in exactly the same way. Sadly, some religions enjoy rights and privileges that are denied to others.

The Jedi currently enjoy none of the many special rights enjoyed by other religions around the world. In fact it is discriminated against in every country on earth. The Jedi actively seek to obtain rights and privileges already accorded to other religions.

Here are just some examples of rights and privileges accorded to other religions but denied to the Jedi.

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  • Education. There are no state funded Jedi schools anywhere on earth. In many countries, including nominally secular countries, the state favours certain religions by funding religious schools dedicated to propagating that religion, and often employing teaching staff on the basis of their faith rather than their teaching ability alone.

    Examples of nominally secular states that do this include the USA, India and Turkey. In other states the case is more blatant and extreme - nearly all Moslem countries promote Islam, and countries in Europe and South America subsidise Christian teaching. This teaching is often inadequate by normal standards, and in some cases amounts to indoctrination, for example teaching the Koran or Bible as though they represented accurate factual accounts, distorting history and misrepresenting or omitting science.

    Bizarrely, the only subject that has been obligatory in UK state schools since 1947 is Religious Instruction, which is currently required to be of a wholly or mainly Christian nature.
  • Taxes. The Jedi religion does not enjoy the right to raise its own taxes, the right to benefit from state raised taxes, nor the privilege of exemption from state taxes in any country on earth. In most countries, including nominally secular states, certain favoured religions enjoy a range of fiscal benefits.

    To take some examples, the Christian Church once enjoyed the right in Europe to raise about a dozen or so taxes in its own right, arrogating to itself between 30% and 50% of the Gross National Product of every European state for many centuries. Today, most of these taxes have been abolished, and even tithes are largely voluntary, but most western countries continue to subsidise selected Christian sects by passing on state taxes in the form of subventions.

    Similarly, many religious sects enjoy exemption from various taxes - for example, rates and other property taxes, and personal taxes (such as the Community Charge in the UK for) for certain religious types.
  • Justice. The Jedi religion does not enjoy the right to administer its own system of justice in any country on earth. For many centuries various mainstream religions have claimed the right to administer their own laws in their own communities.

    Examples are the Jewish courts of Medieval Europe and the system of Sharia in Islamic countries. Such anomalies continue to this day - not merely Sharia in Moslem countries. In England the Anglican Church still has the right to pass its own laws and to run its own courts - including the right to exclude the public whenever it chooses. Amongst the offenses it still tries are heresy.

    All of the principle monotheistic religions claim that their system of divinely inspired justice overrides any mere earthly law. Consequently, many Christian sects have subverted the laws of sovereign countries, and still do so, often without fear of prosecution. Examples from the modern Roman Catholic Church alone include illegal missionary activity, smuggling, ignoring laws on dress and education, harbouring known criminals, conspiring to subvert the course of justice, misprision of treason, and protecting convicted war criminals.

    Church officials also routinely break the law, refusing to disclose information to the secular authorities when required to: for example concealing the identity of and giving succour known terrorists and other criminals.
  • Diplomatic Rights. Jedi believers do not enjoy any diplomatic rights. By contrast Christian missionaries frequently travel on diplomatic passports, and so enjoy a set of rights and legal exemptions denied to others.

    For the Roman Church, the case is even more incongruous. By international treaty the Vatican City is considered a Sovereign State and its head, the Pope, is regarded as a head of state. Consequently, senior clergymen enjoy diplomatic immunity, and this immunity is routinely used to protect senior churchmen accused of involvement in serious crimes - including, in recent years, embezzlement and murder.
  • Immigration and Asylum Rights. Jedi believers do not enjoy any special rights of entry to any country. By contrast many countries have made special provision for allowing entry to members of favoured religion.

    Examples include missionaries who can for example enter countries like the UK under special terms, and members of religions who purport to be persecuted in their home country.
  • Conscientious Objections. Jedi believers, like secular humanists, cannot easily claim exemption from military service on the grounds of conscientious objection to war. Exemptions have routinely been made on religious grounds, for example in the UK and in the USA, but only for certain recognised religious sects.
  • Religious Buildings. Jedi believers do not enjoy any special privileges for their religious buildings. As well as enjoying exemptions from property taxes, certain countries actively fund religious buildings.

    For example, in nominally secular France, the state (and its local government authorities) own the churches and pay for their maintenance and upkeep.

    Privileges elsewhere include Church exemptions from planning regulations, and even the right to trade on a Sunday - a right denied to everyone else on the grounds that the Christian bible forbids it!

    In other countries religious buildings are protected in other ways - for example in secular Turkey, bars serving alcohol may not be opened within a certain distance of a mosque.
  • Salaries and Sinecures. Jedi believers do not enjoy any state subsidised positions. Many states, including nominally secular states pay the salaries of various religious functionaries.

    For example, many countries pay for chaplains and prayer rooms - in the legislature, in the courts, in the military forces, in prisons, universities, in schools, hospitals and so on. In many older universities professorial chairs are reserved for theologians, even though their is no demand for their services and the scholastic theology that once justified their positions was completely discredited several centuries ago.
  • Human Rights. Human rights are routinely denied to Jedi believers, as they are to secular humanists, but not to members of other religions.

    For examples, Moslems, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Rastafarians can demand special diets in prison, in hospitals, in the armed forces and in schools. Similarly they are allowed to wear certain clothes and their own hairstyles.

    Jedi sages teach that The Force informs each true Jedi believer what they should eat from day to day, and what they should read, and wear, and what they should do with their hair - and that it is sacrilegious blasphemy for anyone even to question this.
  • Legal Protection. Jedi belief is not protected by law. In contrast, Blasphemy laws are exist in many countries - including supposedly secular countries like the USA, where blasphemy can be, and has been, prosecuted under the common law.
  • Exemption from inconvenient legislation. Jedi believers do not enjoy any exemptions fro the law such as those enjoyed by Christians.

    For example the Christian Church is routinely given exemptions from European legislation. UK Examples include sex discrimination legislation, equal rights legislation, employment legislation, religious discrimination legislation, and human rights legislation)
  • Jedi Holidays. No country on earth gives public holidays to celebrate Jedi festivals. By contrast almost countries give public holidays in honour of the festivals of other religions.

    Even avowedly secular states do this. For example over half of all French public holidays are Catholic festivals - including the one for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
 
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