The Force is (not) strong with this one

I saw on The Straits Times online today an article that gave me chuckle. I wasn’t going to blog about this – I’ve been madly busy at ISATE 2009. But my elder brother sent me a forward of the same news article later in the afternoon, and I thought given the utter lunacy of what the story’s about, I thought why not LOL:

Sep 22, 2009
Jedi thrown out of store

THE founder of a religion inspired by the Star Wars films was thrown out of a supermarket for refusing to remove his hood, AOL reported on Tuesday.

Daniel Jones, head of the 500,000-strong International Church of Jediism, was asked to leave the Tesco supermarket in Bangor, North Wales as his attire was deemed to be in violation of Tesco’s rules, which forbid the wearing of ‘hoodies’ while in the supermarket.

Mr Jones, who also goes by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, claimed he was ‘victimised over his beliefs’ and left ’emotionally humiliated’ when staff deemed him a security risk and told him to leave. He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave.’

According to the rules of the Jedi church, members should wear a hood in public places. ‘It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head,’ Mr Jones said. ‘You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work, but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public.’

…

The Telegraph reported that a Tesco spokesman defended the store’s actions, saying: ‘He hasn’t been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores, although we would ask them to remove their hoods.’

‘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.’

Folks and visitors to our blog here will know that I enjoy both the Star Trek and the Star Wars series, even though George Lucas has milked the latter well past its worth, what with his constant revisitations to the classic series + slap a few more special effects = sell more DVDs.

I’m tempted to think of Jediism as a cult, but that suggests I’d need to take that organization with more seriousness than I do now. At best, Jediism for me is a non-religious movement where fans of the series can role-play and have a ball of fun doing whatever it is they do in Jedi services on the Sabbath (or whatever is the equivalent). At worst, it becomes a farcical movement when its adherents actually go about stretching their hobby past the divide into the real world and expect to be taken with the same seriousness as the other world religions.

But what I found especially interesting wasn’t that this so-called founder of the International Church of Jediism has written new rules of behavior about not being publicly hoodless in his order, nor the apparent 500,000 persons who’ve put Jediism as their religion on the UK  / Canada / New Zealand / Australia National census of 2001.

It’s that the guy is considering legal action against Tesco. Because personally, he’s quite going the wrong way.

The best way to prove his point that his church deserves equal respect is to return to the store and perform one of those Jedi mind tricks on those nasty Tesco store people. Or better, do a Vader choke – that ought to teach all those insufferable skeptics there a lesson! Surely, this must not be beyond the founder of the religion to do – for Yoda was merely a Jedi Master and not founder.