I'll snip as I go along...
>>>
SNIP>>
>Having people bringing knives to school infringes on the right to safety of everybody else in that school.

That's a dubious "right", frankly. Sure, safety of every person is valid, but fear of the loss of safety is hardly the same thing. School buses have accidents when kids are in them. Ban school busses? Parent have accidents driving their kids to school or elsewhere. Ban cars? I maintain that it is radio wave that are the major cause of cancer. Ban all transmissions by radio, including radar and microwave ovens?
The Justices took into account that there had been not a single incident of a Sikh with his knife harming or threatening anyone. If someone feels threatened just because it's there that's the fretter's problem, not the kid's.
Fear of fear got President Bush into Iraq. Good move?

>
>
SNIP>
>>As both being "lethal weapons" there is no argument. But I related in another message how 3 of us jumped a guy at school who pulled a knife on us. Couldn't have done the same with a gun in his hands.
>>
>
>If your example is intended to show that this isn't a big safety issue, then why prevent anybody from having a knife? Why is it only allowed as a matter of religious expression? Either it's a danger which should trump religious freedom or it's not a danger and should be generally allowed.

In the arena of PERSONAL FREEDOM there may be only few things that "trump" other things. Look at you folks in the U.S., with your alleged Constitutional right to own guns. Any kind, for any purpose, regardless its design purpose. Advocates claim that nothing can trump what's in the Constitution and they seem to be right despite how stpid it sounds.
I believe that here in Canada we have two official ways to override personal freedoms - "for the greater good" and by what we call the "notwithstanding clause" which afford a government (provincial or federal) to acknowledge infringement of some personal freedom yet retain a law anyway. I think those are reasonable (I think there'd be hell to pay if the Feds ever used the clause, but provinces have done so with little repercussion) and I'm confident that the Supreme Court considered the former in rendering its verdict.
Democracies are not designed to make everyone the same, but rather to allow everyone their differences. The argument "if him, then me too" doesn't hold all the time, nor can it, in our kinds of societies with such huge divergence.

SNIP>>
>>Absurd for sure. No, I would have you and your religion outlawed through due process.
>
>
>So we are agreed, freedom of religion isn't an absolute and doesn't exist unless you (or duely appointed representatives) agree with the concepts of the religion?

No. Let me clarify. Your naked religion would be one of "convenience" designed solely to prove a point. I think it's reasonable to say that any new religion would have to conform to norms of the day, so you could only practise your new religion on private property not visible to the general population.
Well established religions with hundreds of years of custom and millions of practitioners are a totally different thing.

cheers