The Sikh Students Association and other Sikhs from the UT community offered to tie turbans on the heads of passers-by on the West Mall Thursday.

The group offered food and answered questions for students during "Tie-a-Turban Day," which is part of Sikh Awareness Week, to give students an understanding about the religion.

"For us, it represents humility and sovereignty," association member Gurjit Singh said about the turbans.

He added that there is a common misconception that all turbans are associated with Islamic culture, but in actuality

99 percent of people who wear turbans in America are Sikhs. Turbans are common in the Middle East because of the weather or fashion, he said.

Gurpreet Singh, a UT graduate and a medical student at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, agreed that people unfamiliar with Sikhism sometimes mistake Sikhs for Muslims. Gurpreet Singh said one of his family members, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered in Arizona four days after Sept. 11, 2001 by a man who stereotyped his turban and beard with that of an Arab.

"They're not even required to wear one, and we are," Gurpreet Singh said.

He added that the turban was originally used as a symbol of brotherhood, which united all the members of the Indian caste system and put them on an equal level. Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, spoke out against the prejudice and inequality that was prevalent in Asia and the Middle East in the 15th and 16th centuries.

"It's pretty unique in that it stresses universal brotherhood," said Harjot Kaur, a biology and pre-medicine senior. "In fact, we have members of different faiths included in our holy book."

Nicolas Watine, an economics freshman, said the association's approach was good compared to more aggressive groups on the West Mall. He said he enjoyed learning about Sikhism at the event's comfortable setting.

"It's really engaging," Watine said. "It's a really good time." [Link]

TURBANS OF EVERY hue were represented at the fifth annual International Sikh Turban Day on Sunday at the Fremont Gurdwara.

Youngsters and others got a chance to wear a turban for the first time and some sported the traditional head wrap to show solidarity with their community.

Guests included Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, Union City Mayor Mark Green and Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-Livermore, who each wore a turban to raise awareness about the Sikh community.

"It's very interesting," Wasserman said after getting fitted with a dark blue turban. "It feels good."

"This is the best I looked all week," Green joked.

Eleven-year-old Harshdeep Singh of Fremont remembers the first time he wore a turban.

"I felt kind of happy, because I always admired my dad when he tied his turban," he said.

Only wearing a turban for the second time, 27-year-old Surjit Chuhan hasn't fully adopted wearing one because he wants to learn more about his culture first.

"I will do it soon," he said. "The more you learn, the more you want to do it. ... It's our culture."

Events such as Turban Day always help with the process, Chuhan added.

The event originated after Sept. 11, when many Sikhs were mistakenly targeted by those who had negative sentiments toward Os-ama bin Laden's al-Qaida faction.

Al-Qaida followers are Muslims, and some Muslims wear a similar head garment.

Hardeep Singh Aulakh, founder of Sikh Children Forum, said that because of the turban, Sikhs are "the most visible people in the world."

"The main reason we started this event was to educate people outside our community," he added.

About 99 percent of the malesyou see wearing a turban in America are Sikh, said Harjot Khalsa, the president of the temple. "It's an important day to show our identity."

The Sikh community is originally from India and is not Muslim. [Link]

This Sunday, Radio Sher-E-Punjab is organizing the sixth annual turban tying competition at the Bombay Banquet Hall in Surrey to mark International Sikh Turban Day.

The competition is free and men and boys of all ages are welcome to join the event.

The day was picked a few years ago by different Sikh groups to coincide with the harvest festival of Vaisakhi, which is celebrated every April 13.

Since the tenth master of the Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh, had founded the Khalsa - a militant Sikh force to resist the oppression of the Mughal Empire - on Vaisakhi day, the Sikh bodies picked the date to celebrate the International Sikh Turban Day. The establishment of the Kalsa also gave the group a distinct identity.

A turban is must for a devout Sikh, who has long unshorn hair. While a number of Sikhs in the Lower Mainland can be seen without turbans, Sikh groups are trying to encourage youth to give up the practice of cutting hair in favour of sporting a turban and this day was launched mainly to promote the tenets of Sikhism.

However, the co-ordinator of the Sunday event, Gurvinder Singh Dhaliwal, who is also a talk show host with Radio Sher-E-Punjab, gives a number of other reasons for holding such an event.

He says that the organizers also want to educate people about challenges facing turbaned Sikhs across the world. These include discrimination against turbaned Sikhs and hate attacks on them in U.S. after 9/11.

"We also wish to remove low-self esteem among the turbaned Sikhs, who are subjected to racial taunts, and make them feel proud of what they are." [Link]

To understand what it feels like to wear clothes of a different faith, non-Sikhs - including the Jewish mayor of Fremont and a Catholic state assemblyman - plan to wrap their heads in brightly colored cloth this weekend as part of "Sikh Turban Day," an international movement launched five years ago.

"I said, 'Sure, I'll do it,' " said Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, who plans to show up early to the Fremont Sikh temple on Sunday to get help winding the long piece of turban cloth around his head. Wearing a turban is a first for Wasserman, who is Jewish.

"It's just a way of showing unity and understanding for each other's culture," he said....

"Sikh Turban Day" was first launched in 2003 by a group called Sikh Children Forum.

Founder Hardeep Singh Aulakh, a Union City computer engineer, said a group of Sikhs got together after Sept. 11, 2001, to try to address the mistaken perception that Sikhs had something to do with the terrorist attacks.

Traditionally, Sikh men wear turbans and have been misidentified as Muslims because al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wears a head wrap, although a different style than the Sikhs.

"We thought, if all the Sikhs wear a turban one day, we can pass the message out and tell others about us," Aulakh said. They likened their approach to Irish wearing green on St. Patrick's Day, or Chinese wearing red on New Year's.

The idea grew from having just Sikhs wear turbans on a designated day, Aulakh said, to inviting non-Sikhs to experience wearing a turban. From one or two Sikh temples participating a few years ago, Aulakh said at least 70 locations in the United States, Canada, England, France, India, Malaysia are participating this year.

"It's been very successful," Aulakh said.[Link]

Jasmit Singh’s religion means he must wear five articles of faith, including a sheathed sword.

Luckily his school is understanding.

The New Zealand-born Pakuranga College student is a practising Sikh.

Sikhs believe in one supreme being, which has no gender.

To become a Sikh, the 16-year-old had to undergo the amrit-initiation ceremony, which he did when he was 10.

They must wrap their unshorn hair and a comb in a turban, wear an iron bangle for a constant reminder to do good and knee-length breeches to encompass living under strict discipline of self-control, and to carry a sword to signify commitment to always stand up for the cause of justice.

Sikh Council of New Zealand chairman Verpal Singh says the problem with the sword is that it gives the impression it is a weapon, "but it is not, it won’t cause any harm. It is a two-inch blunt sword."

Jasmit says his school accepts the need for Sikhs to wear their five articles of faith.

Some schools insist on enforcing a rule that comes directly in conflict with the Sikh practices, says Mr Singh.

"The usual problem is forcing children to wear a cap, or asking children to take off their head garment.

"We have judgements of courts in Canada, the UK, the United States and other countries available which uphold our right to wear the five articles of faith on our body at all times," he says.

To neglect to wear one or more of the five items represents a serious lapse in the Sikh religion.

Jasmit began wearing his five articles of faith last December.

"The first time I wore a turban I was kind of nervous. I thought I’d be asked a lot of questions, but people were really understanding," he says.

As part of the practice, cutting your hair or shaving is forbidden because it is a gift from God, "mine comes down to my waist," Jasmit says.

Both his parents and his sister wear turbans.

"Our forefathers preferred to die rather than cut their hair or remove their turban. A Sikh with unshorn hair appearing without their turban in public is akin to an average person appearing in public in their under garments," Mr Singh says.

"New Zealand society has been very accepting of our unique appearance and very accommodating of our specific needs. Some sporadic instances are unavoidable," he says. [Link]

When Queens News caught up with Sikh community activist Jagir Singh Bains via phone recently, he was heading to a library to donate books.

"We want to educate non-Sikh Americans on Sikhs and Sikhism," Bains said.

The awareness campaign was started by the Sikhs "because of the confusion and mistaken identity about them among city residents, post-9/11/01," Bains said, and further explained: "Many innocent people have become victims of misplaced anger and hate because of their appearance. This project will improve the availability of information on Sikh culture, history and religion via multimedia resources."

Out of 62 community libraries in Queens, so far Bains and other Sikh community leaders have donated literature to 13; they are striving to make donations to the remaining libraries around the borough. [Link]

As I watched the presidential debates recently, I heard a term thrown around that made me shiver- Islamofascism. While the threat of terrorism scares me, the discussion around terrorism has implications that are just as frightening, when these types of terms enter our common vernacular. A recent Gallup poll showed that 40% of Americans admit to feeling prejudice against Muslims. As social dialogue continually associates Islam primarily with terrorism and evil, we unintentionally facilitate an unjustified hatred for Islam and anything that may be even tangentially relate to it. This has a very real and scary impact on peoples' daily lives. One of the places it can have the greatest impact is somewhere we've all been before - the schoolyard.

As you may know, I'm currently one of the models in Kenneth Cole's new advertising campaign, which tackles this issue of stereotypes in the media head on. As a Sikh man, I wear a turban, which is an integral part of the Sikh identity. However, in the United States, the vast majority of media coverage related to turbans focuses on another group of people who wear different types of turbans - Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. Unfortunately, this has had a significantly detrimental impact on the daily lives of Sikhs around the world, who are now frequently mistaken for Islamic fundamentalists, although they are not even Muslim. While nobody should be persecuted because of their religion, including Muslims, Sikhs in particular have faced a disproportionate impact from post 9/11 bias crimes.


Particularly distressing is how this affects young children. At least 75% of Sikh children in Queens, New York reported some form of harassment due to their religious identity, according to the Sikh Coalition. Over 40% of these children have suffered physical violence because of their appearance, and even when reported to school administration, one-third receive no help whatsoever from school administrators. Nearly all of these children report receiving this abuse because they've been misidentified by their attackers as terrorists. One child, a six year old Sikh born in the United States, reports that kids in school have nicknamed him "enemy," because to them, he "looks like the enemy." Unfortunately, this type of treatment is not isolated, and is reported by young Sikh children across the country.

Our core curriculum in the United States glosses over the Sikh religion in even the most privileged school systems, even though it's the fifth largest religion in the world. Therefore, most children's exposure related to turbans and beards are limited to the portrayals reinforced in the media related to the Taliban and terrorism. Imagine the collective impact, then, when the first picture from the Kenneth Cole campaign went up in a storefront in Rockefeller Center and appeared in GQ this month. For one of the first times, these children had an opportunity to have their Sikh identity represented in a way they can be proud of when they walk down the halls of their schools. I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to have a positive impact in these childrens' lives, who through no fault of their own regularly brave hatred in the hallways.

Only in the past half-century have we as a society curbed the widespread image in media of African Americans as servants and slaves, and put an end to the Anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews as conniving and obsessed with money.

We've come a long way, but we've still got a long way to go.

Although these Sikh children often suffer silently, they don't need to. By starting at home and educating your family about the Sikh faith, every American can lend these children a hand in ending the rampant racism and abuse that plagues Sikh youth across the United States. [Link]

Muslim students distribute head scarves to foster an understanding of women who wear hijabs

For Kavelle Thorne, the most challenging part of wearing a hijab for the first time was figuring a way to get the earphones for her MP3 player on without dislodging the bright pink scarf covering her hair.

Luckily, Sajda Khalil, a veteran hijabi and organizer of the National Hijab Day initiative at the University of Toronto, was on hand. "You have to go under the scarf, not on top" she said, laughing.

Thorne, a third-year Caribbean studies student, was one of 70 non-Muslim women at U of T to take part in the cross-country initiative to encourage an understanding of the everyday experiences of a hijab-wearing Muslim woman.

Overall, those experiences are the same as any other woman, said Khalil. While most women face relatively few incidents of overt racism in multicultural Toronto, Muslim women on campus have been targeted in the past.

In March 2006, the university was forced to make a statement after incidents including a verbal attack on a hijab-wearing woman and eggs being dropped on two students with hijabs.

The impetus for this year's event was an attempt to open dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, said Khalil, a volunteer with the Muslim Students' Association.

"The hijab creates a separation between yourself and somebody who is not Muslim," she said. "People are more hesitant to just come up to you and ask you about it, even if they want to. That's why this kind of event makes it a lot easier for people to start a conversation, and makes them realize that there really isn't that much difference between me and them."

Third-year student Zarie Lorne wanted the first-hand experience of wearing a hijab. She wore hers on the TTC to university and felt conscious of the inquisitive stares.

"I've gotten a lot of looks, a lot of confused looks," said Lorne. "I think they're curious and want to ask questions, but they are scared."

Nicole Miller was worried that wearing a hijab for a day would be offensive to Muslim women.

"I don't know if we can really understand their experience by wearing the hijab just one day," she said.

The inspiration for National Hijab Day came after a McMaster University professor created an event last April to draw attention to discrimination against Muslim women. A week later, her office door was vandalized with graffiti. [Link]

Over 400 officials receive SALDEF's Sikh cultural competency training

In late September, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), the nation’s oldest and largest Sikh American civil rights organization, trained over 150 law enforcement officers in Pittsburgh and West Virginia on Sikh religious and cultural practices.

“Until today, I was completely ignorant of Sikhism,” said Pittsburgh Police Detective Julia Stoops. “I learned a lot. This was great, one of the best training sessions I've taken in a long time.”

Representatives from the FBI, Pennsylvania State Police, West Virginia State Police, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), City of Pittsburgh Police Department, and many others learned about the significance of the turban, the five articles of faith, and recommendations on how to properly interact with the Sikh American community.

“The training was a great tool to sustain and develop relationships before an incident occurs,” said SALDEF National Director Rajbir Singh Datta. “I was very pleased to see members of the local Sikh American community attend to cultivate those friendships.”

Additionally, all 250 agents of the FBI – Washington Field Office underwent Sikh American cultural awareness training and viewed On Common Ground, the first and only Sikh American cultural training film for law enforcement.

The training is part of SALDEF’s Law Enforcement Partnership Program (LEPP). SALDEF’s LEPP has trained over 36,000 law enforcement officials on Sikh religious practices; 12,000 of which have occurred in 2007 alone. [SALDEF Press Release]

After months of hostile letters to the newspaper - and a growing number of letters defending the group - roughly 150 visitors from as far as Hollister and Santa Clara gathered at the San Martin Lions Club Saturday to learn about Islamic culture and the challenges faced by American Muslims in a post 9-11 world.

"Americans are not discriminating against us because of what they know about us, but because of ignorance," the crowd was told by Maha Elgenaidy, a speaker from the Islamic Networks Group, a nonprofit formed after 9-11 to spread knowledge about Islam to government officials, law enforcement personnel, schoolchildren and other groups.

Elgenaidy explained that Muslims, like their Christian and Jewish peers, greet each other with expressions of peace. Similar to the Judeo-Christian religions, Muslims believe in a single God and high moral character -- essentially the Golde Rule of "do unto others," Elgenaidy said. The perceived differences in Islamic culture are often distortions or outright fabrications, Elgenaidy said.

The pink, flowered scarf covering her head, for instance, is not an emblem of female oppression but one of liberation, Elgenaidy said, explaining that Muslim women cover their hair and bodies so that they are judged by their intellect and character rather than their sexuality. The word "jihad," meanwhile, is another staple of Islamic culture that has been distorted by media in both the East and West, she said. Violent Islamic fanatics have "hijacked" the word, which in its truest form represents the internal struggle of every Muslim to live a life of purity and high moral character. In mainstream Islam, she said, the word also describes selfless actions such as charity or the prevention of abuse or violence.

"Osama Bin Laden to me is like David Koresh or the Davidians," she said, referring to the cult leader and his followers who died in an FBI raid in 1993. "He has nothing to do with my religion."....

The list [of a list of recent hate crimes directed against Bay Area Muslims] includes arson at an Antioch mosque and a Sikh man in Santa Clara who was stabbed in the neck because of his Middle Eastern garb (the perpetrator was a neighbor who said he feared the man was a terrorist). [Link]

I am a 30-year-old Sikh girl born in New Zealand and brought up in Sydney, Australia.

Over my lifetime in Australia, I have seen it mature into a wonderful multicultural society. I am now married to an Irish Catholic man, and have been living in Dublin for the last four years. On the whole, I found Irish people quite pleasant, curious about me and my background, but overall pleasant and peaceful people.

I have made many friends here, and think it's generally a great place. As immigration is only really starting now, compared to some of the other Western countries, it's only natural that people are quite ignorant about other cultures. But unfortunately, ignorance usually brings about a lack of tolerance.

I would like to help people understand the reasons why Sikhs wear a turban.

The Sikh religion is only founded in the 16th Century in India. And in a society where there was constant war between Muslims and Hindus, the Sikhs needed to differentiate themselves so they weren't targeted by mistake, and hence they came up with various religious symbols.

One of these symbols and a defining factor of a Sikh is the 'kesh' which is the long uncut hair that a Sikh keeps.

Now to keep this tidy, most men tie their hair on the top of their head and wear a turban on top of it. If men did not wear the turban, they would have to cut their hair, and hence in part they would not be a Sikh anymore.

Now when referring to keeping religious symbols at home, the difference with Sikhs is the turban and the uncut hair is not something that can be left at home and then worn again when they return. If they lose the turban and their 'kesh', they lose their identity as a Sikh man. [Link]

The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) recently formed a partnership with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of Washington, DC, to train all 3,000 officers of their force about the Sikh American community and their religious practices.

The program, which has been ongoing since March 2007, has trained over 1,000 MPD officers to date. They join the roughly 5,000 local, state, and federal officers trained this year as part of SALDEF’s Law Enforcement Partnership Program (LEPP).

“It is of paramount importance that we reach out to and create strong bonds with law enforcement,” said SALDEF Managing Director Kavneet Singh. “Law enforcement agencies understand the importance of actively engaging with the communities they protect and together through programs like our LEPP, we can create a stronger and safer community.”

Despite being part of the American landscape for about one hundred years, misconceptions still exist about the Sikh American community. Nine out of ten LEPP graduates have reported that what they learned will immediately help them better serve and protect their communities.

The training program is designed to provide law enforcement with an understanding of the Sikh religion and provide recommendations on how to appropriately interact with the community in non-emergency, non-crisis situations. The program utilizes a professionally designed interactive presentation, SALDEF’s Training DVD On Common Ground, and other educational publications including our Who are the Sikhs brochure and SALDEF’s pioneering Law Enforcement Reference Card.

One MPD officer said, “[The SALDEF Program is] the best hour of training I’ve had in twenty years on the force.” Community leaders have also noted stronger and friendlier relationships between law enforcement and the Sikh American community. Since its inception, the heads of the over 150 agencies and 30,000 law enforcement and security officers who have gone through LEPP. [SALDEF Press Release]

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, we were gripped with incomparable fear. Mothers on soccer sidelines whispered about gas masks on e-Bay. We questioned the efficacy of duct-taped plastic wrap as a household barrier against chemical warfare.

The hysteria has since been quelled, but the fear remains, simmering, and reminders of our vulnerability - a car bomb in Glasgow, Michael Chertoff's "gut feeling"- are too frequent.

But I fear more than potential acts of terrorism: I fear the angry swell of our own anti-Muslim backlash. I fear the ugly vitriol spewed forth on the Internet, where anonymous commentators unleash torrents of raw hatred. When The Courant reported on the Muslim convention, the reader responses on the paper's website were so hateful and profane that the editors shut the comment thread down.

I fear for the Pakistani and Indian boys and girls in Glastonbury, who hear other children hiss "terrorist!" as they brush past in school hallways. I fear for the West Hartford teenage Muslim who denies his faith to avoid being bullied. We've become a nation that sanctions hate against 1.2 billion fellow inhabitants of the planet - very frightening.

In an effort to confront my fears, I attended the annual convention, which offered a free symposium for non-Muslims....

When I left the conference and entered the parking garage, I saw a Muslim woman walking in my way. Her face was covered, except for her eyes, by a veil - a niqab. My discomfort and uncertainty returned: Should I say hello? Is she allowed to speak to me? Does she hate me? Is she afraid? Am I?

We approached one another. A casual voice came from under the niqab, "Hi, how're you doing?" I could see the smile in her eyes.

I responded in kind. As people do. [Link]

Harkirat Hansra is not your typical teenager.

The 17-year-old is the only turban-wearing Sikh at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento. That turban has been the cause for discrimination ever since Sept. 11, 2001.

Hansra’s moment of awareness came in a Sacramento mall when someone told him and his father to “Go back to Afghanistan,” he said.
“We aren’t from Afghanistan. We’re from India,” he said. “We’re not terrorists, and we’re not Muslims.”

Hansra’s father, Gurpreet Singh, said his son has only been to India once.

“If someone tells him this is not your country, where will he go?” Singh asked.

Hansra said he didn’t feel out of place in his community when he was growing up and still doesn’t. But after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he heard several disparaging comments and realized that many people were ignorant about Sikhs. Consequently, he made it his mission to educate people and work for racial tolerance.

He started by participating in Yuba City’s annual Sikh parade and last year created a Web site, www.infoaboutsikhs.com, on which he receives feedback from around the world.

In May, he self-published a book called “Liberty at Stake.” It is subtitled “Sikhs: The Most Visible, Yet Misunderstood, Minority of America, a Teenager’s Perspective.” It is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other stores....

The message is in the book’s title, he said. The Pledge of Allegiance says there is “liberty for all” – but that liberty is at stake, said the father.

Singh said he is proud of his son’s efforts to educate people about Sikhs and their beliefs.

“He is fighting the American way – through education.” [Link]

It wasn't long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that Sikhs living in the United States realized something was terribly amiss. They had a big bull's-eye across their chests, or at least it felt that way.

Sikh men were wearing turbans -- so of course, they must be anti-American terrorists. That case of mistaken identity has been well documented and, for the most part, remedied.

But one young man in the Sacramento area didn't think it went far enough. Harkirat Hansra, a 17-year-old Mira Loma High School rising senior, wrote a book to explain who he is, what he believes and clear up the whole thing about the turbans once and for all.

His book is about Sikhs but not for them. His audience is everyone else.

Although Hansra never felt in danger, he recalls a time soon after 9/11 when someone shouted, "Terrorists, go back to Afghanistan."

For one thing, Hansra was born in San Jose and his parents came to the United States from India.

His book is called "Liberty at Stake" and is subtitled "Sikhs: The Most Visible Yet Misunderstood Minority in America."

It went to press through the self-publishing venture iUniverse and costs $12.95. [Link]

Members of a local Sikh temple -- the women in vibrant tunics and some of the men in turbans -- had spread across the square last weekend to give away soft drinks and water to passersby and carloads of people stuck in construction traffic.

The responses ranged from a quick "No, thanks" to a skeptical "Nothing's free," and, most frequently, a curious "Free? But why?"

The drinks are distributed to commemorate the death of Guru Arjan Dev Ji, a Sikh spiritual teacher from the 17th century, said Satvir Kaur, who teaches Punjabi classes at the Sikh Sangat Society Boston temple in Somerville. "It's also a way to give back to the community and to raise awareness about the Sikh faith," she said.

Sikhs have been reaching out to Greater Boston for several years. But the puzzled reactions last weekend showed that many of their neighbors are still not acquainted with the religion....

Last year, the Sikh community gave away 10,000 drinks in the Haymarket area, Kaur said. This year, at the less-congested Union Square location, they filled the back of a U-Haul van with 5,000 cans of soda, bottles of water, and jars of mango juice, chilled in enormous tubs of ice....

The Sikh community has had a presence in Boston since the 1960s, said Diana Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University. But public perceptions took a downward turn after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"There were a lot of images of [Osama] bin Laden on television, and people were confusing Sikhs as linked with Al Qaeda," said Harpreet Singh, a 32-year-old graduate student at Harvard University.

Turban-wearing Sikhs were physically attacked, prohibited from boarding planes and trains, or taunted and insulted. On Sept. 12, 2001, a member of the Sikh temple in Milford was removed from a train because he was wearing a turban and misidentified as a possible terrorist.

Sikhs are still frequent targets for hate crimes and discriminatory remarks. The Sikh Coalition, an advocacy and outreach group, registers several violent attacks against Sikhs every month in its online database. According to Singh, it is "almost a given" that when he is out in public, someone will call him "Osama bin Laden," despite the fact that bin Laden is a Muslim.

In a study released by Cambridge-based Discrimination and National Security Initiative in 2006, 83 percent of Sikh respondents said that "they or someone they knew personally had experienced a hate crime or incident after 9/11."

Another 64 percent of Sikh respondents said that they were fearful for their physical safety after 9/11, compared with 15 percent of Indian Hindu respondents and 41 percent of Pakistani Muslim respondents.

Muslim women who wear head scarves and Sikh men who wear turbans directly experience "what it means to be a visible minority in America," Eck said.

"There is a sense in the community that one's visible difference can make you a target, but the Sikh response has been one of outreach, with campaigns to let people know more who Sikhs are," Eck said. "Part of what we're seeing with the distribution of drinks is a continuation of that effort."

While Sikhism is a distinct religion from Islam, Eck added, "Sikhs are very sensitive to the fact that saying they are not Muslim does not mean it's OK to discriminate against people who are Muslim." [Link]

Sikhs first landed in the United States more than a century ago. A Sikh place of worship is called a Gurudwara. "Guru" means the one who enlightens us and "Dwara" means doorstep. The first Gurudwara was opened in Stockton in 1912. A Gurudwara is open to all irrespective of your religion or nationality. No invitation is needed to visit a Gurudwara. There are more than 26 million Sikhs worldwide; almost 3 million live outside India, from where they originated. One million make their home here in North America....

Sikhism, the youngest of the world religions, barely 500 years old, has no link to other religions. The founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak, born in 1469, had a simple message: "We are all one, created by the one, creator of all creation." He respected all religions and believed that there is one God and many paths to reach Him. Nanak was followed by nine more Gurus in succession. The 10th and the last, Gobind Singh, declared, "Realize, ye men, human race is all one." Gobind Singh baptized the Sikhs on April 13, 1699, and called them Khalsa (the pure one). Khalsa is a spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood devoted to purity of thought and action. He gave Khalsa a distinctive external form to remind them of their commitment and help them maintain an elevated state of consciousness. He ordered all men to have the same last name of Singh. He also ordered Sikhs to have unshorn hair and men to wear turbans....

This distinctive form of the Khalsa with the turban makes Sikhs the most visible. You can spot a man with a turban among a crowd of thousands. The turban symbolizes discipline, integrity, humility, and spirituality. The turban is mandatory part of Sikh faith, not a social custom, or a hat that can be casually taken on and off. Sikh Americans are identified by their turbans.

America meshes well with Sikh beliefs, namely, freedom of speech, religion, justice, liberty, and equality of all people without regard to gender, race and religion.

Sikhs do not believe in terrorism, hurting the innocent, racial profiling, war based on religion or proselytism.

Finally, Sikhs not only treat women as equal but have the utmost respect and love for them. They believe that it is because of women that great men are born. Women have equal rights in every sphere of life including being a Sikh priest. When I was growing up in India, I remember parents telling their young daughters that if you ever find yourself in harm's way, spot a Sikh, go to him and he will protect your honor and dignity and you will be safe with him. It was true then, and decades later, it is still true and always will be true. [Link]