The specter of a backlash against the Sikh community similar to the ones the United States witnessed for months and years after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, seems to be haunting the community as much as the Muslims in the wake of San Bernardino shootings by a radical Muslim couple earlier this month. Add to that the call for a ban on all Muslims from entering the U.S. by the Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
But unlike in the post-9/11 days, this time around the two communities are beginning to take steps to stand side by side to protect themselves from possible hate crimes.Sikhs, who wear turbans and keep long hair and beards in deference to their religion, are concerned that they might be targets of attacks by people erroneously identifying them as members of the so called Islamic State, or simply Muslim terrorists.
Sikhs say that if a person wants to harm a Muslim for whatever reason, s/he may not be able to distinguish between a Sikh and Muslim, nor would the person care that both communities want to live in peace. That fear or concern might not be a bugaboo.
Last week a gurdwara in Buena Park, Calif., was vandalized where expletive-laced graffiti referencing Islam and the Islamic State was found by the temple members. Police have opened a hate crime investigation into the vandalism.
In Chicago a teenager pleaded guilty last week to one count of hate crime of beating a Sikh cab driver on the streets of the city earlier this year. And in New York Sarker Haque, a Muslim storeowner was reportedly assaulted Dec. 12 by a man who is believed to have screamed that he would “kill Muslims.”
Sikh community members say that recent anti-Muslim rhetoric, especially by Trump, has made Sikhs vulnerable to attacks and assaults along with their Muslim brethren. “I think there is a real sense of fear among the Sikh community. We need to come together with Muslims and other communities to make sure that the black days in the wake of 9/11 when innocent people were killed and harassed just because of their looks or skin colors do not come back again,” Maj. Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, the first Sikh of his rank to serve in the U.S. Army with his beard and turban, told this correspondent.
Kalsi, who was deployed to the war theater in Afghanistan twice and is a bronze star medal recipient, said he feels that probably he has heard about more hate crimes and instances of bullying in the past few months than before.
The Sikh Coalition documented that in the first month after the 9/11 attacks, more than 300 cases of violence and discrimination against Sikh Americans took place in the U.S. The FBI recorded over 9000 hate crimes nationwide in 2008 and 10 percent of Sikhs in the San Francisco Bay Area reported being the target of hate crimes during the same period. Rana Singh Sodhi, brother of Balbir Singh, who was one of the first Sikhs to be killed in Mesa, Arizona soon after 9/11 in a hate crime, said that at this time Sikhs are standing together with Muslims in order to defend themselves from possible bias attacks. “It is not just Muslims, but we are standing with all minority communities because our goals are the same – to be allowed to live in peace in the United States and at the same time preserve and defend our religion and culture,” Sodhi said.
Pardeep Kaleka, a former Milwaukee police officer and teacher whose father was one of six people killed in 2012 when a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, felt that this is the time to band together. “For us it does not matter who they’re targeting.
This time we cannot differentiate ourselves. When hate rhetoric is being spewed we cannot be on the sidelines,” he was quoted as saying.
Others like Gurjot Kaur, a senior staff attorney at The Sikh Coalition, said everybody is trying to fight together. “We are in this fight together,” she said. A measure of the seriousness of the haunting scenario is that the White House convened a meeting of people from the Sikh and Muslim communities.
President Obama’s top advisors held a series of meetings Dec 14 to discuss the fallout their communities might be facing in the wake of San Bernardino shootings.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, without mentioning Trump, said that “the kind of offensive, hateful, divisive rhetoric” that one has heard from a handful of Republican candidates for president “is damaging and dangerous.” Earnest said that the White House would use the outreach to discuss the concerns of the communities and discuss efforts to combat discrimination and highlight the need for welcoming all faiths and beliefs.
Kalsi in his interview with News India Time said that he for a long time felt in this fight against hatred both Sikhs and Muslims should be together, adding that it is wrong and quite un-American on the part of Trump to talk about the Muslims the way he did.
“As a devout Sikh I feel it is my responsibility to stand up not just for my own community but also for the Muslim community as well. I know that Americans have problems differentiating Muslims and Sikhs, but the problem is that it is also happening to the Hindus also because the Hindus also do not look very different. I hope that we in the United States have learned lessons from the past, including
from Japanese Internment.”
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