A Day in Espanola – Interview with Kirin Kaur
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A Day in Espanola – Interview with Kirin Kaur
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Fifty-five percent of adolescent Muslim students in California say they’ve been targeted for their faith.
29/09/2016: In a move hailed by civil rights groups, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) announced Sunday that he’d signed a bill meant to counter the widespread bullying of Muslim and Sikh students in the state.
The Safe Place To Learn Act requires the California Department of Education to ensure that school districts “provide information on existing school site and community resources to educate teachers, administrators, and other school staff on the support of Muslim, Sikh, and other pupils who may face anti-Muslim bias and bullying.”
According to a November 2015 report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 55 percent of Muslim students aged 11 to 18 in California reported being bullied or discriminated against due to their faith. That’s double the national average of kids, including non-Muslims, who report being bullied at school.
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CAIR Quotes from California Muslim students surveyed by CAIR on being bullied because of their faith. |
Twenty-nine percent of California students who wear hijabs said they’d experienced “offensive touching or pulling of their hijab.” Ten percent said they’d been physically harmed or harassed for being Muslim. Almost 20 percent said their fellow students had made offensive comments to them online. And nearly 20 percent of students said they’d experienced discrimination from a school staff member.
Twenty-nine percent of California students who wear hijabs said they’d experienced “offensive touching or pulling of their hijab.” Ten percent said they’d been physically harmed or harassed for being Muslim. Almost 20 percent said their fellow students had made offensive comments to them online. And nearly 20 percent of students said they’d experienced discrimination from a school staff member.
“Having school site and community resources available to students experiencing bullying is a big step forward to ensuring a safer environment for our kids,” said Hussam Ayloush, executive director at CAIR-Los Angeles, which co-sponsored the bill. “We welcome the support from our governor and legislators in addressing this serious issue.”
Sikh students, meanwhile, faced similar rates of bullying. A recent study conducted by the Sikh Coalition found that more than half of Sikh children in four states, including California, experience bullying at school. That number jumps to 67 percent for Sikh students who wear turbans. In Fresno, according to the study, over half of the students surveyed said school officials didn’t respond adequately to bullying incidents.
Americans of the Sikh faith — a religion distinct from Islam — are often the targets of anti-Muslim violence, harassment and prejudice.
“Every child has the right to a safe and nurturing learning environment,” said Harjit Kaur, community development manager for the Sikh Coalition, another co-sponsor of the legislation. “This bill provides educators, students and parents with resources to help ensure that right.”
The bullying in California of Muslim students and students perceived to be Muslim came into focus earlier this year when Bayan Zehlif, a senior about to graduate from Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, discovered that someone had changed her name to “ISIS” in the school’s yearbook. Once a popular girl’s name, “ISIS” these days is more commonly associated with the terror group that calls itself the Islamic State. It’s also become a slur commonly hurled at American Muslims.
After Zehlif spoke out about against her representation in the yearbook, she says, she was subjected to harassment and bullying.
“A poster was put up of ‘We Support Bayan,’” she said, “and it was ripped down and students started to cheer.”
The pervasiveness of anti-Muslim bullying reflects a growing wave of Islamophobic hostility and hate crimes in California and across the nation.
A report from the California State San Bernardino Center on Hate And Extremism found that anti-Muslim hate crimes increased 122 percent in California between 2014 and 2015. The same report documented at least 260 hate crimes against Muslims nationwide in 2015 ? nearly an 80 percent rise from 2014 and the highest annual number of such crimes since 2001.
The Huffington Post has recorded at least 260 instances this year of anti-Muslim violence, harassment, discrimination and political speech.
According to CAIR, the Safe Place to Learn Act is the “first and only bill directly addressing the issue of Islamophobia in California. The negative tone in our national politics has enflamed a disturbing trend of scapegoating and fear-mongering targeting American Muslims.”
The bill, which also requires the state superintendent of public instruction to publicly post anti-bullying resources related to Muslim and Sikh students, goes into effect on Jan. 1.
The Huffington Post is documenting the rising wave of anti-Muslim bigotry and violence in America. Take a stand against hate.
Reports of incidents in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and concerns that hate crimes would rise prompted the founding of the Sikh Coalition, which has grown into the largest Sikh advocacy and civil rights organization in America. In the first month after 9/11, the group documented more than 300 cases of violence and discrimination against Sikhs in America.
In the years since, hundreds of hate crimes have been reported, many of them described by police as cases of mistaken identity, like the September 15, 2001, murder in Mesa.
As America marks the 15th anniversary of 9/11 this month, many Sikhs say they feel no safer in this country. A climate of fear has prevailed since the Paris attacks in November; it has surfaced every time shootings and terrorist attacks are blamed on Muslims. Many feel the focus on immigrants in the 2016 presidential election has added to the hatemongering.
“I definitely feel the uptick of more hateful rhetoric in the country,” says Singh.
“Whatever I think the environment is around us, I know children absorb all the messages,” he says. “How can we prepare them to meet the world that may not be prepared to meet them?
“Why are we being attacked for being Sikh?” he says. “My tradition teaches me to ask what are we doing as a community to have a far more welcoming embrace of people who are different than us.”
Sikhism was founded in the 16th century by Guru Nanak in Punjab, an area that is now divided between India and Pakistan. Nanak rejected the rituals involved with other South Asian religions and stressed the importance of good deeds such as serving others and treating all people equally.
Lawyer and activist Valarie Kaur says the threat of violence seems to have become mainstreamed.
Her grandfather settled in California a century ago, and she knows firsthand from her family that discrimination against Sikhs existed long before 2001. But 9/11, she says, was a paradigm shift, a turning point.
She used to talk about living in the “shadow of 9/11.” Then the shadow turned out to be long, and what seemed temporary became permanent.
“Bigotry on the fringe has been cemented,” says Kaur, whose 2008 documentary, “Divided We Fall,” explored Sikhs in the United States and what it meant to be American in a post-9/11 world.
“The threat of hate and racism has become a part of our daily lives,” she says.
Despite the current climate, both Singh and Kaur expressed optimism for the future. Both are vocal about their Sikh identities and talk about landmark changes they hope will make things better in America. They point to younger generations of Sikhs who are fiercely proud of their outward identities and to people like Rana Singh Sodhi, who lost two brothers within a matter of months and became a strong voice for his community.
On Thursday, Singh Sodhi will again gather with family and friends at the corner of 80th Street and University Drive in Mesa, Arizona.
The Chevron station had been the pride of his older brother Balbir, who arrived in the United States in 1988 and worked hard to achieve the American dream.
That dream shattered in 2001, and now a small marble-and-granite memorial bears these words etched in gold lettering: “He was killed simply because of the way he looked.”
This is ground zero for the Sodhi family.
Balbir’s killer, Frank Roque, told the police: “I’m a patriot and American. I’m American. I’m a damn American.”
Balbir considered himself a patriot, too. An hour before he died, he had driven to a nearby Costco to purchase plants for new landscaping at the gas station. On his way out of the store, he emptied his wallet, donating $74 to the 9/11 victims’ fund. Then he called Rana and asked him to bring a few American flags to display.
Balbir was the eldest of eight siblings in a farming family from the Indian state of Punjab. He and his brothers resettled in America and felt indebted to the nation that gave them new opportunities.
But 10 months after Balbir’s murder, a second brother, Sukhpal, was also gunned down, while driving his cab in San Francisco. Police said it was not a hate crime, but Rana is certain that both his brothers were killed because of their Sikh identity.
“I understand that everyone has to leave this world but not because we wear a turban, wear a beard,” he says. “America is the most diverse country in the world, but people have zero knowledge about who we are.”
He’s saddened when he meets Sikh men who shave their beards and abandon their turbans out of fear.
“I don’t want to live scared,” he says. “This is America. I should be able to live the way I want to live.”
Sikh Americans suffered their darkest moment on August 5, 2012, when white supremacist Wade Michael Page went on a shooting rampage at a Sikh gurdwara, or temple, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page killed one woman and five men; all the men were wearing turbans.
At the time, it was the worst hate crime committed in a house of faith since the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Although the incident made national news, it did not get the same attention as other shooting incidents, says activist Kaur.
“It happened on Sunday. By the following Sunday, we were bumped,” Kaur says. “The media did not think the American public had the attention or did not care enough to understand this community. They could imagine a movie theater or an elementary school or a black church. But not a gurdwara.”
Since then, Sikh Americans have made some important gains, Kaur says. That includes an announcement in 2015 that the FBI would begin tracking hate crimes against Sikhs. Sikh Americans had lobbied for years for such documentation, arguing it was a key step in combating such crimes.
The first report will be released later this year.
“It is not going to prevent an Oak Creek massacre, but it was a landmark civil rights victory,” Kaur says.
Ultimately, she says, the only way to prevent violence and discrimination is for people to get to know each other. Oneness and love, core foundations of the Sikh faith, are the only way to save the Sikh community, she says.
Sikhism also embraces a concept called seva, which means selfless service. Kaur says Sikhs must go beyond education or lobbying and engage in seva in their neighborhoods to gain full acceptance in this country.
Prabhjot Singh, the Manhattan doctor, agrees.
“I deeply believe in the Sikh spirit of seva,” he says. “Working in our communities where we live is one of the more powerful things we can do.
“Shortly after I was attacked, I prepared to shift my work, to work in a community context, and learn how to be more rooted in the work of creating a more loving nation. It’s not easy, and I’m no expert. But if anything, being attacked primed me to listen more carefully and feel the consequences of our choices more deeply.”
When he sat down with his son, Singh told him their lives were forever connected to the lives of his assailants. And that they would spend a long time thinking and talking about it, just like he asks Sukam to think about times he hurts his younger brother.
One man was later arrested in connection with the attack and charged with aggravated harassment and committing a hate crime. No one else has been apprehended.
After the beating, Singh knew it was important for the Sikh community that justice was done, but more important for him, he would like to meet the perpetrators. Perhaps, he says, he is naïve, but he believes that getting to know people who are different is the best way to create change.
Singh would rather his attackers be taught than caught. He wants the streets of Harlem to be safe for his sons. More than anything, he wants that group of young men and boys to stop hating.
Singh posed the question to his son. “What should I do to them if I meet them?”
Sukam smiled. “You have to wake up their hearts.”
For Singh, that was the right answer.