As a Wisconsinite, my heart broke this morning when I heard about the news of a domestic terror attack at a Sikh gurudwara in my home state. As a Christian woman, I was ashamed that this act was committed by a man bearing the symbol of my faith on his arm. And as an American deeply invested in our interfaith landscape, I was angry that it takes an act of violence to raise Sikhism to the level of visibility needed to prevent religious violence.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 radically heightened the visibility of Muslims in America, with both negative and positive results. On one hand, Muslims became linked to terrorism, and American Muslims were subjected to widespread prejudice, violence, and discrimination. On the other, there arose in the aftermath of the attacks a great amount of interest in learning about this religious tradition, which had previously seemed foreign and distant. The demand for professors of Islam in universities suddenly outstripped the supply. Arabic classes became highly sought. Even ten years later, when those who started attending college after 9/11 have begun getting their graduate degrees, competition remains much lower in this field than in other academic religious fields. The supply has only begun to catch up. Some of the most exciting new scholarship on Islam is now coming out of the West.
Sikh Americans were subjected to the same prejudices faced by Muslim Americans in the aftermath of 9/11. Yet only now, in the aftermath of this tragedy in Wisconsin, am I seeing the educational interest. Only now am I seeing Washington Post publishing “Sikhism: What do you know about it?” and Glamour magazine touting must-read Indian-American and Sikh women’s perspectives. Only now am I aware of the existence of a Sikh community in my home state, and I am reading articles and posts by Sikh Americans like Valarie Kaur and Simran Jeet Singh. I lament that it took an act of terror to bring me to this point. It only makes it worse that it is this very knowledge that destroys the breeding ground of fear, ignorance, and intolerance that made the act of terror possible.
I realize that hate crimes are fueled by a complicated set of sociological and psychological forces that cannot be prevented by mere religious education. White supremacy will continue to be a blight upon our communities, especially when we strive to dismantle the systems of privilege it seeks to preserve. But if we can make some good out of this tragedy, we must let it shake the foundations of privilege in this country. We must realize how the hypervisibility of Christianity has eclipsed so many other religious traditions, and how that invisibility has left Sikhism on the margins and vulnerable to prejudices born of ignorance.
And finally, we must pray for a day in which it will not take the deaths of our fellow-citizens give to our brothers and sisters the listening ear they deserve.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
If you are serious about finding another way, I strongly recommend reading the book :Being Different: An Indian challenge to Western Universalism” by Rajiv Malhotra.
And follow up with the author himself, who will be in Chicago in November.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out.
Am very pleased to hear this! Please let me know if you find the book interesting and relevant. Thanks!
Thank you, Kathryn, for your thoughtful and insightful article. Respect and understanding seems to seep all too slowly into the “melting pot” culture we have always claimed we had. Change comes slowly and sometimes, hard. Now with some polarization and defensiveness going on in our country– in an era of rapid change, we are caught off guard about the “acting out” and violent tendencies of some people.
There is much to pray about and speak out about for positive change. You are doing your part!
Thank you for this essay, and especially for the concluding paragraph where you note that religious violence like the Sikh shooting, and the mosque burning in Joplin, MO, will require more than religious education. That is part of our challenge, but we must also address the dislike and sometimes hatred of the “religious other,” and thus relational or incarnational contexts are important for our teaching. In addition, we must impart not merely the embracing of tolerance, but allow religious adherents to express their very real differences but in peaceful ways through a process of civil contestation.
Kathryn, thank you for this post! I echo your prayers and hope for that day as well.
“White supremacy will continue to be a blight upon our communities”
Sorry I have to speak up. I don’t think white supremacy is the issue in America. Being of a mixed person of Jewish/Acadian/American Indian decent I feel I must speak out on this issue. One day there will be an American race and I feel its been well on its way. I am a product of American Culture. The issue isn’t supremacy. The issue is hatred. Hatred isn’t just fostered in white households. I get it all the time in many mixed settings. I travel state to state within the U.S.A. and overseas. Being raised in an Acadian French area I get spoken to all the time by people trying to mimic Justin Wilson’s accent. It all comes around to world view and education. Education, community values and acceptance of differences. White supremacy has nothing to do with the current USA climate.It takes only one visit to Gettysburg to become educated in the fact that thousands of white American’s died for the freedom of others. Don’t pull the race card. It works both ways. It comes down to deciding if you are American first or American last. Humans all have feelings regardless of skin color or ethnic origin.One of the basic freedoms for which the original constitution upheld is that man was created equal in the sight of God.That is what is being eaten away like cancer. I may not agree with what everyone else thinks or practices but then they do not have to agree with me either.
I think that you raise some good points regarding the universality of hate, but White Supremacy is alive and well in the US. You can check out the list of hate groups on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. They have 8 listed in Wisconsin, of which 7 are tied to Christianity and specifically White Supremacy (4 Neo-Nazis, 1 White Nationalist, 1 Christian Identity, and 1 “Racist Skinhead”), and 1 is a Black Separatist, Nation of Islam. (See: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map#s=WI)
I think that we should should address this hate which you correctly identify as the problem from all the angles, and I think that we should certainly target specific areas of hate, and White Supremacy is one of those. I don’t see anyway the author has “Played the race card,” since she certainly seems to have ample evidence of specifically racist activities in WI, and these activities do breed the hateful actions and contribute to the overall culture of hate. What could we do to address hate of all forms (which you correctly identify as a problem), since hate in any form will breed hate elsewhere.