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Notes -
The UK already had hard-won religious freedom; it just didn't have meaningful representation of a religion whose commandments conflicted with a weapons ban, so the issue hadn't come up. It might very well have come up even with zero immigration, if a lot of white Englishmen had started converting to Sikhism out of some trend, in the same way that so many British hippies got into Buddhism.
And I guess I just don't see that big of a conflict there… I think "virtue" is a weird way to describe the weapons ban. I don't believe Brits think it's deontologically wrong or taboo to carry knives; I think they've adopted weapons bans as a technocratic, utilitarian policy. Whether religious freedom is to be thought of as a deontological line-in-the-sand or consequentialist utilmaxxing is perhaps more debatable, but in either case, this makes it sensible to trade one against the other depending on circumstances. Something like: "I believe that in a vacuum, it is good to minimize the amount of citizens permitted to carry knives, as doing so will reduce violent crime and I do not believe that people have an innate right to bear arms. However, I also believe that the state should rarely if ever ban religious practices. Therefore, the best way to maximize utility while respecting the constraints of respecting religious freedom is a weapons for ban for everyone except people whose religion mandates that they carry a ritual knife on their person at all times" is in no way incoherent or self-contradictory.
(Again, it seems isomorphic to other kinds of religious exemptions, i.e. "I do not believe that parents should have the right to pull their kids out of school whenever they like; but I believe it's important for the state to respect religious practices; therefore parents are allowed to let their kids skip school on their faith's recognized holy days, but not for any other reason". I don't think there's a "virtue" of respecting religious freedom, and a "virtue" of mandatory education, that are in conflict here in any problematic way, it's a very common-sensical status quo to end up with.)
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