In what can be termed as a hate crime, a US man allegedly pulled a gun on an Uber driver of Sikh faith after they got into an argument regarding his allegiance to the US.
“Which country do you belong to?... I hate turban people,” a male passenger told Singh, who is also a religious community leader based out of Northwest Illinois. Singh wears a turban and sports a beard as part of his faith.
According to reports, Gurjeet Singh filed a case shortly after the incident happened in late January, but the passenger is yet to be arrested. The Rock Island County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating the alleged assault, and the delay in making any arrests is a cause of worry for the Sikh community.
“We do still remain concerned that no arrest has been made and the State’s Attorney’s Office has yet to file hate crime charges,” national advocacy group The Sikh Coalition’s legal director and Singh’s lawyer Amrith Kaur said in a statement. “Mr. Singh and the local Sikh community have the right to feel safe. The reality is that hate crimes are not only attacks on individuals; they affect the entire community. They make all of us less safe, and everybody should be outraged by this.”
Men in the Sikh community have been victims of numerous hate crimes since the September 11 attacks, as they are often mistaken for Muslims.
The first month after the 9/11 attacks saw more than 300 cases of violence and discrimination against Sikhs in the US.
The first victim of hate crime post 9/11 was not a Muslim, but a Sikh man.
In 2011, two elderly Sikh men were killed while out for a walk in Elk Grove, California.
In 2012 a gunman entered a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Wisconsin and killed six people.
According to some, a person of Sikh faith has to go out of his way to prove he is not a threat to the country. Educating the masses about the Sikh faith is a step forward in reducing the number of hate crimes against them.
Bob Blackman MP speaks during the event