Sikh Massacre in Milwaukee

by Dr. Aslam Abdullah
Sikhs are not Muslims. It is not right to mistakenly kill Sikhs. Go after Muslims. They are the culprits and the target of your hatred. Sikhs are peaceful and Muslims are violent. This summarizes the level of intellect in response to the biggest tragedy ever hit the Sikh community in the United States in this century, when seven of them were murdered by a Christian White Supremacist military veteran.
If the killer knew who Sikhs are, he would not have done what he did.
Both the arguments are fundamentally wrong and if accepted they would both lead to more violence against Muslims, Sikhs and anyone else who does not fit in the White Christian right-wing republican as well as hardcore Zionist image of an American citizen.
Ignorance is not an excuse to promote and perpetuate violence. Differences in faith are not to spread hatred.  You do not have to know anything about any faith to know that violence is bad and killing is wrong.
The right response is to assert that violence is unacceptable under any circumstances. Muslims are as much entitled to a peaceful life as Sikhs and Christians and Jews are, and one cannot hold an entire community responsible for the actions of a few.
There are several causes of the growing violence in America and around the world. Some of them are simple to comprehend and others a bit complicated.
1. The culture of violence that the entertainment media create through movies, games, and role plays has made many people insensitive to violence. Columbine, Aurora, Milwaukee are clear manifestation of that insensitivity on the part of perpetrators of violence.
2. Violence in the name of nationalism, religion, financial gains, faith, and ethnicity is justified all over the world. From Churches, Synagogues, Temples and Mosques battle cries are often raised against those who are different or hatred is injected in the mind of believers through poisonous sermons.
3 Violence in its popular form is widely prevalent in homes among spouses and children and it is considered justified to maintain balance in the family by many.
4. Special interest groups instigate individuals and groups to continuously promote fear tactics against others: Jews would take over, Muslims are coming, the Russians have infiltrated, the Indians are engineering riots in Pakistan, the Pakistanis are behind every act of violence and so on and so forth. They are some of the tactics used by special interest groups to spread hatred unabated.
5. Politicians and public officials have used every single difference among people to divide and promote their political agenda: to win elections and use the power to enhance their riches and favor their supporters.
6. Failure of the religious clergy to take a clear stand against violence. Jewish clergy would not speak against Jewish violence in Palestine, Muslim religious leaders would not speak of violence against Hindu pundits in Kashmir or against Shias and Sunnis or people of other facts, the government would justify killing to protect national interests. Since 9/11 our country is responsible for the direct or indirect killing of over a million people around the world and the violence has not stopped.
7. Control and manipulation of the media at the hands of powerful who care more about their wealth than human life. Spreading of lies, false stories and manipulation of events and demonizing a people is all that the media has done in our recent times.

So what should be done to counter these forces?
 All that has been enlisted is nothing new. This has been going on for centuries and to expect these powerful interest groups to do anything different would be unfounded optimism. The only way that would eliminate the influence of these factors is to enable individuals at the grassroots level to develop an alliance against the powers of evil. Through interfaith, interracial, interethnic and international efforts people can reassure themselves that they are one against violence, regardless of the perpetrators and they would stand as one person in defense of human life. It would happen when they would have to re-educate them in their own faith or cultural traditions and purge their thinking from violence thoughts. Otherwise, today we mourned the Sikh the same way we mourned the people Aurora, Columbine and other places yesterday, and tomorrow we would mourn once again for similar tragedies. Despite the statements issues by leaders and clergy, nothing has changed in our world, because our response to these challenges is wrong.