Sikhs Feel Vulnerable, Join With Muslims To Combat Backlash

Chicago: Pardeep Kaleka spent several days after 9/11 at his father's 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.

"For us it does not matter who they're targeting," said Kaleka, a former Milwaukee police officer and teacher whose father was one of six people killed in 2012 when a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. "This time we cannot differentiate ourselves; when hate rhetoric is being spewed we cannot be on the sidelines."

Across the US, Sikhs and Muslims are banding together to defend their respective religions. Someone bent on harming Muslims wouldn't understand - or care - about the distinction between the two faiths, they say, and both also deserve to live in peace.

So they plan educational sessions and rallies. They successfully pushed the FBI to track hate crimes against Sikhs. They speak to lawmakers and support each other's legal action, including a lawsuit filed over a New York City police surveillance program targeting New Jersey Muslims.

"We are in this fight together," said Gurjot Kaur, a senior staff attorney at The Sikh Coalition, founded the night of September 11.
 There are more than 500,000 Sikhs in the US. Male followers often cover their heads with turbans - which are considered sacred - and refrain from shaving their beards.

Reports of bullying, harassment and vandalism against Sikhs have risen in recent weeks.

Last week, a Sikh temple in Orange County, California, was vandalised, as was a truck in the parking lot by someone who misspelled the word "Islam" and made an obscene reference to ISIS.

Several Sikh football fans said they initially were not allowed into Qualcomm Stadium to watch the San Diego Chargers game against the Denver Broncos last Sunday because several of them were wearing turbans. Schoolchildren say they've been bullied.

For most Sikhs, much of the backlash has been frequent stares or comments and occasional online insults.

Former NCAA basketball player Darsh Singh said he has heard insults throughout his life, including recently when someone recently yelled "Osama!" at him as he was crossing a street in Phoenix.

Rajinder Singh Mago, community outreach director at the Sikh Religious Society of Chicago, said it's more difficult for Sikh schoolchildren who sometimes are bullied.

"Ninety-nine percent of Americans are good ... then that one person who just came out of a tavern after a few beers, you don't know what he's thinking at that point," Mago said.

Madihha Ahussain, a staff attorney at the national group Muslim Advocates, said people who are misinformed about both religions not only are "blaming entire faith communities, now they're blaming multiple groups for the acts of a couple individuals."

As a result, some Sikhs have encountered violence.

A Chicago-area teenager was charged with a hate crime after a September road rage incident in which he called 53-year-old Sikh taxi driver Inderjit Mukker "Bin Laden" and repeatedly hit him in the face, breaking his cheekbone.

In 2013, a Green Bay, Wisconsin, man was charged with a hate crime for allegedly setting fire to a convenience store owned by a Sikh-American.

That was less than a year after white supremacist Wade Michael Page killed six people and wounded four others at the Oak Creek temple. Kaleka said his father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, was the last person killed inside the temple, after Page broke into an office where the elder Kaleka was calling police.