US prejudice: 9/11 fears put Sikhs on scare list with Muslims
October 16, 2009 (Washington, DC) – Today, the civil rights concerns of the Sikh American community were featured on RT–an international English-language news channel broadcast to more than 200 million viewers in 100 countries on five continents throughout the world.
Sikh people have been targets of intolerance, especially after 9/11 when the anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States was growing. According to a recent poll, 40% of Americans admitted to have a prejudice against Muslims. Oftentimes because of Sikhs’ turbans, they get mistaken for Muslims and end up becoming targets for hate crimes, work place discrimination, and racial profiling at airports. Today, because of their turbans, Sikhs still can’t enlist in the U.S. army and in some states they can’t teach in public schools.
Perhaps the way to combat religious prejudice is to spread the notion that it is very small group of people in any society who perpetrate the type of crimes which earn them notoriety.The sikhs themselves earned bad name in the aftermath of the attack on the Golden Temple,but unfortunately for the muslims a small band of baddies have managed to tarnish the whole religion .For the host society it is better to learn tolerance and ability to differentiate between the good and the bad rather than tarnish the whole group.