I also have an issue with the “beat them up, not us” argument, but for a different reason. There is obviously a need for Sikhs to educate others about their identity and part of that education is differentiating yourself from other religions and cultures. For too long now people have thought that Sikhism is a sect of Islam or Hinduism and it has been the fight to change this mentality and to establish Sikhism as its own religion that has led to the recent post-9/11 education on Sikhs to be seen as the “beat them up, not us” education that you are all referring to. I don’t think this education is in any way suggesting that because Sikhs are different from Muslims that means they should not be discriminated against, not us. We wouldn’t tolerate that — a tenet of Sikhism is to fight for equality for all. But think about it from a viewpoint that Sikhism has always been combined with another religion whether 300 years ago or post-9/11 and Sikhs are basically continuing a never-ending fight to educate people on this religion as its own entity and not in conjunction with other religions.

When a Sikh child is not being teased about that “thing” on his head he should infact call himself a Muslim voluntarily because he should be able to take the extra teasing since he is already used to it and this mught even prevent an actual Muslim kid from being teased, thus saving that kid from being teased.

I swear Sikhs can be so selfish.

yea i live near the toronto area and haven’t heard anything about recent attacks on actual temples. this is the only other mention of recent attacks that i found. sounds to me that the guy making these claims is looking for some attention. there are so many prominent hindu figures in the area who would have definitely brought this issue to at least one major newspaper if it were true.

the attack on the hamilton temple post sep 11 is definitely true… the temple was burnt to its foundation. and several gurudwaras were attacked at that time as well. but nothing has surfaced in the last month.

i find that post sept 11, in the GTA (greater toronto area) at least, there has been much greater awareness of different cultural and religious backgrounds. in 2001, a student org i was part of initiated a campus-wide awareness campaign re this issue, but the purpose was to promote tolerance and avoid ignorance, not to “beat them up, not us”. many similar efforts were initiated at the time across campuses, in schools, in the media because GTA is so multicultural.

there may be a different angle to why showing a gurudwara in the backdrop in particular was such a faux-pas… remember the alleged sikh terrorist air india flight hijacking in 1985? there has been a major terrorist incident involving sikhs in canada in the past. this is probably still in the back the canadian public’s mind, especially since the final court hearings only ended in last year in march. so having a gurudwara in the back drop might have more incidental damage than showing a temple for example.

hate crimes are bad… no argument of course… but even if people aren’t physically attacked, there will definitely be prejudice against an accused religious/cultural group, which they will surely want to avoid. which is why distinguishing between muslim, sikh, hindu to the general public is important to some. i feel that in canada, they are worried about the prejudice issue more than anything since every other person in the GTA is brown!

Heck, Sonia, I was just a kid myself. All I know is that people used to get angry at the brown skin / turban / beard thing (although I had no beard at the time). They’d yell stuff. It was New York, people are always yelling stuff at somebody, as long as there’s no violence at home it doesn’t mean anything

Ok… I got the korematsu reference now and looked through the advisory board. looks like a fine bunch of folks. my snark was unnecessary. Anyhow, I’d still do a reference check on the temple attacks.

Taking off from there, I cant find any real reference to this.

Hindu temples, including those where Guyanese worship, were attacked in Toronto last week.

that korematsu guy at DNSI you use as reference seems to be in perpetual pain and a little bit unbalanced. Are you sure that body of work isnt delirium induced?

It is more like differentiating kafirs on the basis of “people of the book” and “idolators/polytheists” in Quran kind of thing.. Don’t sweat about it..