Sikhs: American kids need a Social Studies Lesson

On going | World History

[Sax]

This stuff ain't new, baby! Stand in support of these noble people!

The most important thing in Sikhism is the internal religious state of the individual.

•Sikhism is a monotheistic religion

•Sikhism stresses the importance of doing good actions rather than merely carrying out rituals

•Sikhs believe that the way to lead a good life is to:

•keep God in heart and mind at all times

•live honestly and work hard

•treat everyone equally

•be generous to the less fortunate

•serve others

[Sax]

[reg45]

This stuff ain't new, baby.

It is to ignorant people.

[dfwgator]

Ever watch “Jay Walking” on the Tonight Show?

This is what we’re up against.

[Jonty30]

They were also awesome soldiers when they were serving the British Empire.

[Sax]

My humble opinion is that the influx of Indian immigrants is breathing life into the vision of America. These folks exhibit the values that we all hold dear: personal accountability, humility, and achievement. We should do everything in our power to support it. Right, wrong, or indifferent, we aren't doing a great job of fostering it internally on a wide scale, so importing it is a necessity. Entitlement is our cancer.

[umgud]

Did the shooter mistake these Sikhs for muslims or does his ilk generally despise Sikhs also? I thought their main targets of hate are usually Jews, blacks.

[beaversmom]

Good point. Some Americans don’t even understand the basic, basic stuff:

Zombie Americans have forgotten why 4th of July is a holiday!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkGP7s0SGtY

Now I can’t say I know a lot about the Sikhs either, but I am aware of them.

[Sax]

I don’t know, but I have my own suspicions. It is saddening to have like minded people bear the brunt of misplaced aggression:

• ** In September 2001, an Arizona gas station owner, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was shot five times and killed by a man who mistook him for a Muslim and was seeking revenge for the hijacked plane attacks on the United States.

• In July 2004, Rajinder Singh Khalsa and his cousin, Gurcharan Singh, were beaten while walking to a restaurant in New York by intoxicated assailants who shouted profanities at them and insulted their turbans. Khalsa sustained multiple fractures to his face.

• In January 2008, Baljeet Singh, 63, suffered a broken jaw and nose in a beating while walking to a gurdwara in Jamaica, New York, by a man who swore at him and called him an Arab.

• In November 2010, cab driver Harbhajan Singh suffered spinal and facial fractures after he was attacked in West Sacramento by a passenger who shouted racial epithets at him, called him a Muslim and punched him in the face several times.

** In March 2011, two Sikh men were shot while taking an afternoon walk in Elk Grove, Calif., near Sacramento. Surinder Singh, 65, died at the scene and Gurmej Atwal died six weeks later. No one has been charged in connection with the deaths.

[beaversmom]

Good point. Some Americans don’t even understand the basic, basic stuff:

Zombie Americans have forgotten why 4th of July is a holiday!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkGP7s0SGtY

Now I can’t say I know a lot about the Sikhs either, but I am aware of them.

[James C. Bennett]

More:

 

The Badass of the Week.

Baba Deep Singh

"Once you step onto this path, you may well give up your head rather than the cause."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the majority of my readers aren't exactly experts on Indian history, so it's probably a safe assumption that you're not familiar with the story of the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh.  Well, it's time to get educated -- because this dude is one of the most hardcore freedom fighters to ever live, and a guy so extreme balls-out in his insatiable quest for vengeance that something as inconsequentially-trivial asbeing fucking decapitated couldn't stop him from crushing his enemies to death with his nutsack.

Deep Singh (Baba is a term of reverence roughly equivalent to "Saint") was baptized a Sikh in 1700, and quickly got busy training in badass martial skills like swordfighting, hand-to-hand combat, horsemanship, resisting torture, circle-strafing, and punching people in the crotch with enough force to blow a hole in a brick wall.  In case many of you out there aren't down with Sikhism, it's pretty much one of the most badass religions this side of Valhalla -- practioners are given a goddamned sword when they are baptized, and they are bound by their religion to carry this implement of pointed death with them everywhere they go.  They also have to grow super-long awesome beards and badass Rollie Fingers-style handlebar moustaches.  After going through a rigorous and intense initiation training so hardcore that it makes ancient Spartan initiations look like Home Economics Merit Badge Day for Girl Scout Troop 666, Baba Deep Singh retired to a nice quiet life studying the teachings of the great hallowed Gurus, hand-scribing copies of the Sikh holy scriptures, and fighting in large-scale revolutions against the oppressive and tyrannical Mughal Empire.

See, dudes like Babur and Akbar were pretty badass in their own right, but the Sikhs weren't really down with being ruled over by some godless heathen Muslims, and if there's one thing you should take from this article it's that you should generally try to avoid fucking with the Sikhs whenever you get the chance.  One of Baba Deep Singh's homeboys kicked off a revolution in the Punjab region of India, and it was on like neckbone.  BDS and his dudes jacked up the Mughals and chased them out of their homelands.

But whatever.  This website is full of folks who threw off the yoke of oppression by lopping off their enemies' heads with hacksaws and then suplexing their decapitated corpses onto a bed of hot coals.  What separates Baba Deep Singh is his mad desire for righteous vengeance, and the lengths he would go to accomplish said feat.  It all got started in 1757, when the Mughal warlord Ahmad Shah Durrani started launching a bunch of raids into India.  He busted in, pillaged, plundered, etc., sacked the city of Delhi, and began triumphantly processing back to Mughal-ville with a newly-acquired trove of plundered goods, stolen religious artifacts, and hot, screaming, kidnapped Indian babes.  Fuck that.  Baba Deep wasn't going to let that shit fly.  He and his men launched a guerrilla raid on the Mughals while they were on the march, ambushing them, kicking their asses and pulling out their tracheas with their bare hands.  The religious artifacts (and hot babes) were all returned to their rightful locations, and all seemed well with the world once again.

Not so fast.

The Mughals are descended from a dude named Genghis Khan.  Maybe you've heard of him.  Well motherfuckers with a pedigree of ultimate extreme asskickings don't take stuff like this lightly.  Ahmad Shah Durrani, despoiled of all of the shit he worked so hard to steal from teeming throngs of unarmed defenseless peasants, took out his revenge the best way he knew how -- by seriously jacking up the Golden Temple of God in the city of Amritsar; the holiest and most hallowed site in the Sikh religion.

 

The Mughals first blew the shrine up with their cannons, then they slaughtered a bunch of cattle and filled the sacred pools of the temple with cow blood and guts.  Now, most Sikhs don't hold cows sacred like the Hindus do, but you don't need to worship at the altar of a bovine god to agree that this is still pretty disgusting and obnoxious.  A large force of soldiers hung around to defend the shrine and prevent the Sikhs from reclaiming the desecrated temple, and the douchebag Mughal ruler picture-messaged pictures of the carnage to Baba Deep Singh's cell phone.

Our man Baba Deep Singh was seventy-five years old at this time, but he hadn't lost a step -- the only thing his excessively old age did for him was give him a totally awesome beard.  As soon as he heard that the Golden Temple had been profaned and destroyed, he pulled his old, beat-up, thirty-pound Khanda sword off the wall and started walking towards Amritsar.  Along the way, he stopped in at every village he came across, recruiting a huge mob of pitchfork and torch-bearing warriors ready to go Dr. Frankenstein on those Mughal bastards who fucked up their holy monument.  These dudes set out to avenge their temple Bruce Lee-style, and nothing was going to stop them.

The improvised peasant army hurled themselves at the hardened Mughal warriors, and insane bloodshed ensued with the unholy realness.  The Mughals were a well-trained force of asskickers, but the Sikhs were super omega ripshit pissed off, and they were flipping out like assassins on those poor bastards, tearing them new assholes with daggers, tridents, and cordless power drills.  During the fighting, however, Baba Deep Singh launched himself at the commander of the Mughal garrison and both men delivered terrible blows at one another, kind of like the intro to Ninja Gaiden on the old-school Nintendo.  The Mughal's head slid off of his neck onto the floor with a disgusting squish.  Baba Deep Singh didn't fare much better -- his head had been almost completely severed from his body.  The only thing holding his cranium upright was his left hand.

Baba Deep Singh, however, was a Mughal-killing madman, and he didn't even give a shit.  He kept fighting, holding his barely-attached head onto his torso with one hand and hacking people in half with his other.  The sight of this dude, sword in one hand, bloody head in the other, must have been pretty goddamned unnerving to the dudes facing him, and the Sikhs cut a swath through the Mughals, driving them from the halls of the sacred temple.  Some legends claim that Baba Deep's head actually came off at one point, and that he held the disembodied head in his left hand while he fought -- sort of like how a chicken with it's head cut off continues to run around for a while, vengeance was so ingrained into the very fabric of this guy's being that his wild post-mortem twitching involved lopping off appendages and stabbing people in the brain.

With the Mughals defeated, Baba Deep Singh died on the floor of the Golden Temple of God.  The temple was re-consecrated by Sikh priests, and the spot where Singh fell is now a shrine where pilgrims come from across India to pay their respects to one of their religion's greatest martyrs.

"There is hardly a mode of torture which the Sikhs have not suffered, and not one has cried in pain or relented."

Links:

Wikipedia

Sikh-History.com

Sikhism Guide

 

 

The Badass of the Week.

Mai Bhago

"Everybody has to die.  Why not die like a brave person?"

If there's one thing I hope this website has taught you about the Sikhs, it should be that they don't really get along with the Mughals.  I'm not an expert on Indian history, but it may have something to do with the descendents of Tamerlane rolling into town, conquering the hell out of everything, subjugating the people, and actively trying to exterminate all traces of their religion.  The fact that the Mughals had a standing cash bounty on severed Sikh heads probably didn't help diplomatic relations much either.

Well in 1704 the Galactic Mughal Imperial Empire decided that they were going to wipe out Sikhism once and for all.  They freaked out, crushed a couple soda cans on their heads, and dispatched the Mughal Darth Vader to surround the city of Amritsar, lay siege to the Guru of the Sikhs, and destroy the entire religion by killing it's head honcho in a ridiculously over-the-top violent manner.

(The fact that there are currently 20 million Sikhs in the world should give you some indication of how successful the Mughals were in their endeavors.  It just took them a while to realize that you don't fuck with these people unless you want to be on the receiving end of a Macho Man Randy Savage-style top-rope elbow drop to the nutsack.)

Now the afore-mentionedleader of Sikhism was a man named Guru Gobind Singh.  Think of this dude kind of like the Sikh Pope (though perhaps the Sikh Buddha would be a more appropriate analogy).  There are only ten Gurus in the entire history of Sikhism, so yeah, you can be pretty sure that this guy was a pretty big deal. He was a pretty serious assbeater in his own right, but to make things worse for the Mughals he was also constantly surrounded by a badass bodyguard of fighters known as "warrior-saints".  These dudes were kind of like the Apostles, only if Saint Peter went around shooting sword-swinging Centurions in the balls with RPG launchers and liberated his people from the chains of the Roman Empire.  These righteous soldiers were like Sikh Paladins with muskets and totally sweet beards, and they sure as shit weren't going to just let the Mughals waltz into Amritsar and decapitate the Holiest man in their religion.  They took up arms, fortified the city, and dared the Mughal Empire to step to them.

This battle that ensued was completely off the chain.  It was like the Alamo with turbans.  The Mughals hurled wave after wave of soldiers at the walls of Amritsar, but failed to break through the ranks of the battle-hardened Warrior-Saints and their wide assortment of pointy death-instruments. After several days of increasingly brutal fighting, however, the Mughals slowly began to wear down the town's defenses.  Eventually, a small group of shell-shocked, war-weary Sikh soldiers decided they'd had enough.  Forty once-stalwart soldiers called it quits, publicly renounced their faith, and peaced out to the nearest place that didn't have pissed-off Muslims stabbing people in the faces with scimitars every ten seconds.

The Duchess Camilla watching a demonstration of Sikh martial arts.

Well there was one badass chick that wasn't going to stand for that weak sauce bullshit.  Mai Bhago was a tough-ass babe from a town near Amritsar who had spent most of her adult life training in the fine arts of awesomeness and studying about badassitude, and she wasn't about to just sit around and let a bunch of ex-Sikh warrior-saints slack off in the facial destruction department - especially when they could be out there dishing out chokeslams and shooting arrows into peoples' eyes with enough velocity to puncture plexiglass.  Almost immediately upon hearing that there was a group of guys heading towards town who had "gotten bored of fighting the Mughals" and decided they "didn't feel like" slicing peoples' necks in half anymore, she go super-pissed off and rode out to meet them.

Mai Bhago came across this sad, disgraceful group of ex-Sikhs not long after she left her town.  As soon as she saw this sorry lot moping around mumbling shit like, "Game over man - game over!", she jumped off her horse, confidently strode up to the closest guy, and then, out of nowhere, she hauled off and open-hand pimp-slapped the dude in the face really really fucking hard. While the rest of the astonished group stood around with their mouths hanging open, she looked each of them in the eye, one by one.  Then, in a tone of voice that only thinly veiled her seething rage, she said something to the effect of, "If you're going to act like bitches, then I'm going to fucking treat you like bitches."  Then she spit, kneed another dude in the junk, and told everybody they needed to sack up and start conducting themselves like the fucking badass Sikh warriors that they were.

Through a delicate, subtle mix of taunting, insults, and hardcore professional wrestling-style pump-up speeches, Mai Bhago made these jerks realize that they had a job to do, and they just needed to pop a couple Zoloft and fucking get out there and do it.  The Guru was badass and all, but he wasn't exactly going to flash-fry the entire Mughal army by firing a matching set of Proton Torpedoes into the exhaust port of the Taj Mahal while screaming overhead at Mach 2 - he needed his warrior-saints at his side; not to bail out on him right when he was in the middle of what could potentially have been his last stand.

After getting slapped around verbally, physically, and emotionally by our take-no-bullshit, fresh-to-death heroine, the forty ex-Sikhs realized that they needed to snap out of it and get back to the business of violently lacerating the tracheas of their much-hated enemies.  Of course, Mai Bhago wasn't the sort of hardcore warrior-chick who was just going to be happy to go back to town knowing that she'd done her good deed for the day - no, she fucking put on her wargear, grabbed a sword and a musket, and rode out there at the head of this company of Sikh hardasses to cause a little estrogen-fueled havoc of her own. She was going to show these guys how it was done.

Well without forty of his toughest hombres, the Guru's situation in Amritsar eventually became untenable.  He (and what little was left of his bodyguard) withdrew from the town, and decided to make a mad, desperate dash for safety. The entire Mughal Army pursued them across India for a couple days, harassing them at every turn, and shit was looking pretty fucking bleak for Guru Gobind Singh and the proponents of Sikhism.

It was at this point that the Guru saw Mai Bhago riding up at the head of a small battalion of re-devoted tough-as-shit Sikh warriors.

 

Mai Bhago led her men out past the Guru, and right into the face of the entire fucking Mughal Army.  At the Battle of Mukhtsar in 1704, she and her warriors charged into the enemy lines, hacking, slashing, and popping peoples' heads off with muskets at point-blank range.  Even the Guru got in on the action, sending a golden shower of auric-tipped arrows down on the enemy from a sniper's nest on a nearby hill.  Mai Bhago herself was credited with taking down something like a half-dozen dudes herself in the exceedingly bloody fighting that ensued. Like I said, this chick meant business.

I came across several conflicting reports of how the battle transpired, ranging from "The Mughals got tired and ran away" to "God came down and smote the entire Imperial army", but the outcome is always the same - the Mughals were driven from the battlefield, the Guru lived to fight another day, and every member of the Sikh contingent was killed in action.  Well, every Sikh except Mai Bhago. When Guru Gobind Singh went down to survey the epic carnage, he found her lying on top of a heaping pile of dead Mughals, barely clinging to life.  The Guru forgave the forty Sikhs for their moment of weakness, and was so pumped up about how hardcore Mai Bhago was that he gave her a healing potion, restored all of her Hit Points, and brought her into his service as one of his personal bodyguards.  She spent the rest of her life traveling with the Guru, serving as a warrior-saint of the Sikh Religion, and the Sikh Joan of Arc is now revered among her people as a holy warrior who offered disgraced warriors a chance at redemption and fought bravely in the defense of her people.

To this day, the Sikhs still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.

 

Links:

Info-Sikh.com

Sikh-History.com

Sikh Forum Post

Sources:

Gandhi, Surjit Singh.  History of the Sikh Gurus.  Atlantic, 2007.

Holm, Jean, and Bowker, John.  Women in Religion.  Continuum, 2000.

Ralhan, O.B.  The Great Gurus of the Sikhs.  Anmol, 1997.

 

 

[mnehring]

You are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the state of education is far more lacking than you realize.

[mnehring]

Sikhs have also embraced the fraternal brotherhood that groomed our founding fathers. We are proud to call many Sikhs brothers in Freemasonry.

[dfwgator]

There are certainly White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis that align themselves with Islam, because the Jews are their common enemy. David Duke is one that immediately comes to mind.

Many Nazis during WWII flirted with Islam, as a religion that was good for soldiers, Heinrich Himmler was said to be very intrigued by it, and actually expressed regret that the Turks lost at the Battle of Vienna.

[Irish Eyes]

Mark

[VeniVidiVici]

What makes you think Sikhs weren’t his intended target? Did they find a note?

[dr_lew]

"There is hardly a mode of torture which the Sikhs have not suffered, and not one has cried in pain or relented."

Well then, what's all this mewling and puking I'm seeing on my TV? I refer to the burning of the American Flag, and associated gestures. Also consider this:

Gandhi's 1984 action to suppress militants which were hiding with Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale led to the attack of the Golden Temple in Operation Bluestar and ultimately led to Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards.[42] This resulted in an explosion of violence against the Sikh communities in the anti-Sikh riots which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Sikhs throughout India;

Suck it up, Sikhs!

[jmacusa]

I've known about the Sikhs for a long, long time. As Doctor Watson said in “The Sign of the Four’’, “I know the Sikh and he is not a man to be trifled with’’.

[zeestephen]

And, American Sikhs might need a history lesson.

As I recall, millions of Sikhs have been massacred by Muslims and Hindus in southern Asia.

[Sax]

He may have been specifically targeting Sikhs. I may be positing a bad idea. I guess I’m playing a hunch and the odds.

[antiRepublicrat]

Thank you, public school system.

[antiRepublicrat]

And in less bloody endeavors, which was the Sikh saint who gave up his own life to torture and execution by the Muslim rulers rather than help them convince people of other religions to submit to Muslim rule? Dude gave his life to protect people who weren’t even Sikh from the Muslims.

[entropy12]

They (Sikhs) are awesome portion of Indian military today.
They compete with Gurkha’s and Maratha’s in bravery category.

[Waryone]

I’m not sure I would chalk this up to stupidity. It seems that these skin heads keep making the same mistake. You’d think they would have gotten the message as to what Muslims look like by now. So I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t really a mistake at all.

Ever since the Oklahoma City bombing, there have been reports of racist groups working with Muslims. Muslims know the difference between their people and the Sikhs. This is just speculation on my part, but I wonder if someone isn’t trying to remove multiple birds with one stone. They can get sympathy for the Muslim cause without Muslims having to suffer injury and they can target conservative groups and empower the campaign to remove guns all at the same time.

[thecodont]

Thanks for the history!

[thecodont]

Thanks for the history!

[Jyotishi]

Thank you for your post.

Guru Nanak founded Sikhism; here’s an excerpt about a spiritual aspect of Sikhism:

“The transformation of the Sikhs into a group hostile to
Islam is one of the ironies of history, for Nanak’s
message aimed at the reconciliation of Hindus and Muslims
through a common faith. . . . his underlying metaphysical
structure is Hindu: the belief in Karma and rebirth, a
feeling that ultimately Reality is undifferentiated, that
there is no barrier between the human soul and the
Absolute. These concepts keep Nanak and Sikhism firmly
within the Hindu tradition. [...]”

- Ainslee T. Embree, “The Hindu Tradition” (1966, 1972)

[little jeremiah]

I’m sure he didn’t think they were Mozlems. He was in psy ops in the military. He wasn’t so stupid as to think Sikhs were Mozzies. No way.

[Mike Darancette]

India got very upset but I wonder how the Sikhs are treated in India. The Sikh population in India is smaller than that of Christians.

[Republican1795.]

Well downtown Los Angeles or Burbank is not exactly a hub of intellectual awareness though.

[Gene Eric]

American kids need to know the Ten Commandments and the Constitution. Sikhs or any another group, there’s no justification whatsoever for the depraved killings.

Good info about the Sikhs, btw. Thanks for posting.

[ZULU]

You left out a VERY important one: Sikhs KNOW how vicious Islam is. They have had to fight it for hundreds of years in their homeland.

[ZULU]

Unfortunately, this proves once again - there can be no cooperation with Islam. It is a deadly viper.

[ZULU]

I believe all Sikh men take the name Singh which means “lion”.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

bookmark for later!

[af_vet_rr]

Did the shooter mistake these Sikhs for muslims....

White supremacists are not known for their intelligence. We're talking about people who admire Adolph Hitler, people who come from the shallow end of the gene pool.

[af_vet_rr]

I’m sure he didn’t think they were Mozlems. He was in psy ops in the military. He wasn’t so stupid as to think Sikhs were Mozzies. No way.

He was stupid enough to be a white supremacist and he was stupid and crazy enough to murder innocent people.

And like so many before him, he has once again proven that the white supremacist movement has yet to produce anybody that the white race should be proud of.

[af_vet_rr]

My humble opinion is that the influx of Indian immigrants is breathing life into the vision of America. These folks exhibit the values that we all hold dear: personal accountability, humility, and achievement. We should do everything in our power to support it. Right, wrong, or indifferent, we aren't doing a great job of fostering it internally on a wide scale, so importing it is a necessity. Entitlement is our cancer.

My niece had a nice side business going for several years until she took a job elsewhere, working with the children of Indian, Japanese, and Korean immigrants. These people wanted their kids to be able function in American society and they did not want them in ESL classes. It was not uncommon for her to tutor some kids 5-10 hours a week, in addition to their normal school work. In the summer, she tutored some 10-20 hours a week.

[ScottinVA]

Hannity used to conduct “Man on the Street Thursdays,” sending a staffer out to interview people about political matters and current events. The lack of awareness and general disinterest in anything beyond the latest and greatest reality show or electronic toy is stunning and rather disheartening. These idiots can`t even name the vice-president. But they`re monolithically in support of 0bama.

It reveals the astounding success the government school systems have attained in achieving the socialist goal of a dumbed-down, ignorant, dependent, liberal populace.

[ScottinVA]

Thanks for posting that! VERY inspiring stuff!

[Freddd]

Somebody left lot out about Sikh’s..

Sikh’s.

The faith essentially ties together Bhakti Hinduism
and Islamic Sufism.

Sufism is Islamic mysticism.

Sufi Sikh’s practices:Prerequisites to practice
include rigorous adherence to Islamic norms (ritual
prayer in its five prescribed times each day, the fast
of Ramadan, and so forth).

They are also called Sufi Muslims.

But the media is reporting the citizens of the United
States ‘ confuse Sikh’s with being Muslim’...

in July 2006, specifically recognized the validity of
Sufism as a part of Islam.

[Covenantor]

Where did you find this crap about Sikhs, on Stormfront?

Sikhism was founded to combat the Islamic invaders. They are mortal enemies. It has elements of Buddhism not Sufism.

Their five principals have nothing to do with islam’s five principals.

I don’t know how many times a day they pray, but they do not prostrate themselves towards Mecca for damn sure. They do have ikons before which they place lighted incense before they pray upright. This is from my direct personal observation.

I’ve known a fair amount of Sikhs since my school days and all have been and have never encountered anything but a steadfast unyielding opposition to islam.

You do know that the Sikhs have held and hold some of the highest positions in the Indian army and have served with distinction in service to England prior to their independence?

As a devout Christian I pray several times a day, does that tie me to some Islamic sect?

Provide some reputable sources that support your statements or ask the admin to pull your disinformation.

[caver]

Two awesome posts about the Sikhs!

[drone]

Individuals from this ‘religious’ society also committed the worst mass murder in Canadian history on June 23, 1985 with the bombing of Air India Flight 182 killing 329 people. No one seems to remember.

[Schwaeky]

no i reasonably believe at this point he was targeting the Sikhs... Politically speaking,to the extent that one can delve in and analyze the vile thoughts and views of white supremacists, they look at the muslims as their kinsman in thought if not blood, because of their mutual hatred of the jewish people.

[aruanan]

Sikh’s.[sic]

The faith essentially ties together Bhakti Hinduism and Islamic Sufism.

Covenantor, he or she is quoting without attribution from one of at least five sources:, four of which refer back to a single source that refers to a short entry in reference.com (relevant sentence shown below*)

1. an article in The Blaze--

The faith essentially ties together Bhakti Hinduism and Islamic Sufism, an interesting mix to say the least. Its founder, the first Sikh guru and a mystic named Nanak, lived from 1469 until 1539. Unlike other faith leaders, Nanak was opposed to an organized priesthood (there are no official priests, but there are scripture readers), a caste system and rituals, among other sentiments, Reference.com reports.

2. an entry in WittySparks News reprinting the piece from The Blaze.

3. Sequesterednews.com that refers to the piece in The Blaze.

4. Politicalref.com that refers to this piece in The Blaze and to other current events

5. PressTrust of India, headlines it as from Associated Press, but the link goes back to WittySparks where it is referred to The Blaze:

Who Are ‘Sikhs’ and What Do They Believe? We Explain

...by The Associated Press, there are approximately 500,000 Sikhs living in the United States, with the majority residing in India (CNN claims that this number is 700,000). The faith essentially ties together Bhakti Hinduism and Islamic Sufism, an interesting...

*From Reference.com: "Sikhism is heterodox, combining the teachings of Bhakti Hinduism and Islamic Sufism."

Geez, and I wasted an hour of my life providing what someone else was too lazy to do.

[aruanan]

Individuals from this ‘religious’ society also committed the worst mass murder in Canadian history on June 23, 1985 with the bombing of Air India Flight 182 killing 329 people. No one seems to remember.

Poor fellow. Plenty of people remember. And Jim Jones was, in many people's minds, a Christian minister who whacked 909 people in Guyana. Of course, we know in retrospect that he was quite a bit different than that, but how does his apparent relationship to Christianity reflect badly on Christianity? Same here with the case of a militant Sikh group and Air India Flight 182. You find extremist nut jobs popping up everywhere in every religious tradition (hey, the first totalitarian community in the West was the product of a "Christian" leader).

[aimhigh]

It’s interesting to see all the flowery comments about Sikhs. They deny Jesus is God or Christ. Like Mormons, they may be great people to know, but it is still a cult.

[James C. Bennett]

Why are these stupids in India burning the US flag?'

Last updated on: August 8, 2012 10:29 IST

 

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-sikh-shooting-why-are-these-stupids-in-india-burning-the-american-flag/20120808.htm

 

 

Dr Rajwant Singh, a high-profile Sikh American community leader, has blasted protestors in New Delhi who have taken to burning the American flag and shouting anti-US slogans outside the US embassy, calling it totally counterproductive to the perception of Sikh Americans.

Singh has been appearing all over CNN and other media outlets explaining what Sikhism is all about following the horrific massacre of Sikhs at the Oak Creek, Wisconsin gurdwara

Singh, chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education and the long-time executive director of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation gurdwara in Maryland, told rediff.com that the actions of these protestors was "just outrageous," particularly at a time when 'the Sikh community has received a significant outpouring of support from all levels of government, the mainstream media, and the broader American public.'

He said, "These people, they are some sort of hired goons by some interest groups --which I have no idea of -- but they are causing so much harm to the image of the Sikhs as well as the interests of the Sikhs in the United States and throughout the world."
 

Image: Activists from National Akali Dal, a regional Sikh political party, hold swords and shout slogans during a protest against Sunday's shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, US, in New Delhi
Photographs: Adnan Abidi

 

 

 

Singh said, "These guys brandishing swords and burning the US flag, it is absolutely outrageous."

"Here the whole nation is flying the flag at half-mast in honour of the victims and these stupid guys are burning the US flag and raising slogans against America -- it is simply ridiculous and outrageous," he said, and added, "It is totally counterproductive to what we are trying to portray here."

Singh said, "We are trying to show that we are a community of peace and equality and outreach and welcoming to all other faiths and religions and these stupid idiots with their swords and burning of the US flag are portraying Sikhs are some frenzied radicals."

He said, "I have looked at the website of these guys who call themselves the National Akali Dal and its has three pictures -- honouring Sonia Gandhi, honouring Manmohan Singh and honouring Abdul Kalam. And now they are burning the flag of America, they are burning the flag of France, they are burning the flag of Australia. I just don't know what they are trying to do there and what their agenda is."
 

Image: Activists from National Akali Dal, a regional Sikh political party, hold swords and shout slogans during a protest against Sunday's shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, US, in New Delhi
Photographs: Adnan Abidi

 

 

Singh bemoaned that in the last few days after the massacre, the media has been showing these images (of the protests) too and this can only do immense damage to the perceptions of Sikhs in America "at a time when we are suffering and mourning and grieving the loss of our brothers and sisters so much here and at a time when the American people are also grieving with us and holding candle-light and prayer vigils in solidarity with us."

 He said, "We are so thankful for this outpouring of support during this difficult time and these protesters in India are operating under assumptions that are simply not true. We have been embraced across the nation."

American support for Sikhs indeed has been global, observed Singh. 

"We are grateful that US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell paid her respects at a Sikh gurdwara in New Delhi and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reached out to her Indian counterpart as well." 

In an exhortation to the US media that have been showing images of the protestors, Singh said, "The protesters in India do not speak for Sikh-Americans and thus should not be portrayed as having anything to do with the shootings and its aftermath. I urge the media to not give these protesters the attention they are seeking or give credibility to their unfounded and wrong views."
 

Image: Mourners cry during a candlelight vigil at the Sikh temple in Brookfield, Wisconsin
Photographs: John Gress

 

 

 

Singh said, "The Sikh community's response in the United States has been one of optimism and inclusion. For example, we have asked all Americans to join us in candlelight vigils honouring the victims and in our services this Sunday (exactly one week after the horrific attacks by white supremist at local gurdwaras). Our attempt to engage one another peacefully should be contrasted with the uninformed theatrics of those in India."

"We are also surprised that the Shromani Akali Dal, the political party in Punjab or Akali Dal in Delhi, who supposedly looks after the issues of the Sikhs, have nothing to say against outrageous theatrical acts of these goons. Why are both Akali Dals keeping quiet?" he asked.

He added, "Sikhs in the US are working day and night to create better understanding of the Sikh faith and this kind of negative acts are harmful for the community and might endanger further lives."

Singh's sentiments were echoed by a leading law professor Dawinder S Sidhu, also a board member of SCORE, who noted that President Barack Obama's order that "American flags be flown at half staff in honour of the victims of the shooting, is a gesture that reflects the extent to which Sikhs have been supported."