PO BAG 1: Sikhs

6 March 2017

Sikhs respond to shooting near Seattle with fear, disbelief

A man wears a head covering with the stars and stripes of a U.S. flag as he attends Sunday services at the Gurudwara Singh Sabha of Washington, a Sikh temple in Renton, Wash., Sunday, March 5, 2017, south of Seattle. Authorities said a Sikh man said a gunman shot him in his arm Friday, March 3, 2017, as he worked on his car in the driveway and told him "go back to your own country." Sikhs have previously been the target of assaults in the U.S. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as the backlash that hit Muslims around the country expanded to include those of the Sikh faith.

Fear, hurt and disbelief weighed on the minds of those who gathered at a Sikh temple Sunday after the shooting of a Sikh man who said a gunman approached him in his suburban Seattle driveway and told him "go back to your own country."

"Everybody who is part of this community needs to be vigilant," Satwinder Kaur, a Sikh community leader, said as several hundred people poured into a temple in Renton for worship services about one mile from Friday night's shooting.

14 December 2015

Sikhs feel vulnerable, join with Muslims to combat backlash

In this Dec. 11, 2015, photo, Darsh Singh, left, poses for a photo with his wife, Lakhpreet Kaur, in Dallas. It happens regularly: Someone sees a man with a turban and beard and hurls anti-Muslim slurs his way, or worse. Members of the Sikh religion, like Singh and his wife, also are feeling vulnerable as anti-Islamic sentiment heats up across the U.S., but instead of distancing themselves from Muslims, members of this southeast Asian religion are working with them to combat hateful rhetoric and dispel misconceptions about their respective faiths.

Pardeep Kaleka spent several days after 9/11 at his father's South Milwaukee gas station, fearing that his family would be targeted by people who assumed they were Muslim. No, Kaleka explained on behalf of his father, who wore a turban and beard and spoke only in broken English, the family was Sikh, a southeast Asian religion based on equality and unrelated to Islam.

But amid a new wave of anti-Islamic sentiment since the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Kaleka is vowing to take an entirely different approach.