A Sikh response to the Wisconsin Gurdwara
shootings.
I had just walked into a hotel lobby
when I saw the words “shooting” and
“Sikh temple” flashing on the screen of the
TV. It felt like a punch in the stomach.
Sobbing in front of a computer screen in
the hotel’s business center, I thought
about how easily it could have been my
parents’ or my brother’s gurdwara that was
being attacked. I thought about how all
gurdwaras are made up of my extended
family members, and we were all targeted.
I thought about all that our Sikh community
in the U.S. has dealt with over the last
11 years—all the lives lost, from Balbir
Singh Sodhi being shot dead in my hometown
of Phoenix, Ariz., four days after
Sept. 11, to the fatal shootings of Gurmej
Singh and Surinder Singh while taking
their evening walk in Elk Grove, Calif.,
last year—all the Sikh children tormented
by bullying and harassment in schools
on a daily basis, being called “Osama” or
“raghead,” their turbans pulled off, just
as mine was in fifth grade and on the
New York City subway a few years ago.
It is widely believed that the targeting of
Sikhs is a case of “mistaken identity,” Sikhs
being mistaken for Muslims. Indeed, we are
by and large attacked because of anti-
Muslim bigotry. While we do not know
whether Wade Michael Page’s act of terror
in Oak Creek, Wis., was fueled more by
Islamophobia than his general white
supremacist ideology, most of us who
experience harassment as Sikhs in the
U.S. experience it through the vilification
of Muslims or Arabs.
Ironically, even some Sikhs get caught
up in vilifying Muslims or at least distancing
themselves from the Muslim community
at every possible opportunity. I remember
in the days, weeks, and months
after 9/11, the first thing out of the mouths
of many Sikhs when talking to the press,
politicians or even their neighbors was,
“We are not Muslims.” While this is of
course a fact, the implication of the statement,
if it stops there, is: You’re attacking the
wrong community. Don’t come after us, go after
the Muslims! Sikhs believe in equality and freedom
and love our country and our government.
But Muslims? We don’t like them either.
The roots of anti-Muslim sentiment in
the Sikh community run deep in South
Asia, from the days of the tyranny of
Mughal emperors such as Aurangzeb in
the 17th century to the bloodshed in 1947
when our homeland of Punjab was sliced
into two separate nation-states. Despite
these historical realities, Sikhism has
always been clear that neither Muslims as
a people nor Islam as a religion were ever
the enemy. Tyranny was the enemy.
Oppression was the enemy. Sectarianism
was the enemy. In fact, the Guru Granth
Sahib, whose scriptures are the center of
Sikh philosophy and devotion, contains
the writings of Muslim (Sufi) saints alongside
those of our own Sikh Gurus. Nevertheless,
historical memory breeds misguided
hostility and mistrust of Muslims,
especially in the contemporary global
context of ever-increasing, mainstream
Islamophobia.
What is it going to take for Sikhs and
Muslims, and for that matter, others to join
together in solidarity against the common
enemies of racial harassment and violence,
racial and religious profiling, and Islamophobic
bigotry? To bigots like Page, it matters
little if one is a Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu.
To them, even a sari- or salwar-kameez-wearing
woman may be just the same as a
turbaned and bearded man. We are all
brown-skinned, all immigrants, all a threat
to their distorted vision of America.
Perhaps the recently exposed NYPD
spying program will serve as a wake up call
about how bad things have really gotten.
While we Sikhs confront bigotry on a daily
basis from our neighbors, classmates, coworkers,
employers, and strangers on the
street, our Muslim American counterparts
are systematically targeted by our own government.
(I should note that, of course,
Sikhs, too, are profiled by law enforcement
in less repressive, though still troubling,
ways, especially at airport security).
Sikhism was born hundreds of years
ago in part to stand up for the most oppressed
and to fight for the freedom and
liberation of all people. If this isn’t reason
enough for us to support the cause of rooting
out Islamophobia from the law enforcement
and government agencies, we only
have to return to the bleak reality we Sikhs
in the U.S. still face in 2012.
“We are not Muslims” hasn’t been so effective
for our community, has it? As long
as we live in a country (and world) where
an entire community (in this case, Muslims)
is targeted, spied on, and vilified, we
will not be safe, we will not be free.
As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his
letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail in 1963,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single
garment of destiny.”
I hope the blatant assault on the civil
rights of our Muslim sisters and brothers
propels us Sikhs, as well as all people of
conscience, to action. Perhaps “We are not
Muslims” will become “We are all Muslims,”
as we come together to eradicate Islamophobic
bigotry in all its forms.
Sonny Singh is a musician and educator based
in New York City.
Website Bonus Feature
Link:
“Urdu, Bengali speakers under police lens in New York.” The Times of India.
PTI Aug 29, 2012, 02.09PM IST
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-29/us/33474924_1_urdu-potential-terrorist-plots-police-officials
NEW YORK: With memories of the 9/11 attacks etched in the psyche of New Yorkers, city police say they give particular attention to Urdu and Bengali speakers when they eavesdrop in restaurants and stores to gather information on terrorists.
Commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s elite intelligence division Thomas Galati said he has keen interest in Urdu-speaking New Yorkers.
“I’m seeing Urdu,” assistant chief Galati said of the data generated by his eight-person demographics unit, which has eavesdropped on thousands of conversations between Muslims in restaurants and stores in New York City and New Jersey and on Long Island.
“I’m using that information for me to determine that this would be a kind of place that a terrorist would be comfortable in.”
“A potential terrorist could hide in here,” Galati was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
“Most Urdu speakers would be of concern.” Nearly 80,000 New Yorkers, mostly of Pakistani and Indian descent, speak Urdu.
Galati also turned to those New Yorkers — perhaps another 20,000 or 30,000 — who speak Bengali.
Galati said that those who speak Bengali would also get the same attention from city police officials.
“The fact that they are speaking Bengali is a factor I would want to know,” he said, adding that the information was used solely to be able to determine where “I should face a threat of a terrorist and that terrorist is Bengali.”
Galati, however, said that compiling of Urdu-and Bengali-and Arabic-language hangouts and eavesdropping had not resulted in tips about potential terrorist plots.
“I could tell you that I have never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a demographics report,” Galati was quoted as saying by the paper.
Top police officials say that the 9/11 Commission found that six of the 2001 attackers lived in Paterson, New Jersey as that city had an Arabic-speaking community.