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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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