Thread by @SikhProf

A short thread on the anti-Muslim hate that Sikhs endure -- and why we continue to stand as allies with our Muslim sisters and brothers.

Sikhs aren’t Muslim, yet we remain frequent targets of anti-Muslim violence. This is, in large part, due to our visible identity, including our beards, turbans, and brown skin.

Most people in the world don’t even know about Sikhs, despite the fact that Sikhi is the world’s fifth largest major religion. This general ignorance is a huge problem, especially when coupled with Islamophobic racism.

Many people ask why we don’t just tell people that Sikhs aren’t Muslim. “Why don’t you let Muslims deal with their own problems?”

The problem with this response is that it just deflects the hate onto another community. That's not right.

Authentic solidarity calls on us to see other’s oppression as our own. It's just not an option to throw another community under the bus -- even if it might make our lives easier.

Authentic solidarity is both ethical and strategic. It’s ethical because standing with those who are oppressed no matter the consequences is the right thing to do. It’s strategic because confronting hate intersectionally (rather than deflecting it) is the only way forward.

Anti-Muslim racism is not just a problem in the “western world.” It’s a global phenomenon with immense and violent implications. We see it in China with the genocidal killing of the Uyghur Muslims. We see it in Myanmar with the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.

Islamophobia is especially bad in modern South Asia, where right-wing nationalists push anti-Muslim propaganda to construct false historical narratives.

This propaganda is putting innocent Muslim lives at risk by distorting what we know about the histories of these communities.

I get hate messages from right-wing fundamentalists daily that push this propaganda. They call me a traitor and a fake Sikh. They say true Sikhs would hate Islam because that’s what Sikhi teaches. As a historian of religion in South Asia, here’s how I know that’s not true.

For one, the founder of the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak Sahib, maintained good relationships with Muslims. In fact, Guru Nanak’s closest friend was a devout Muslim named Bhai Mardana, and they traveled together for years throughout South and Central Asia.

Guru Arjan Sahib, the fifth Sikh guru, was friends with Sain Mian Mir, a prominent Qadiri Sufi from Lahore. They were so close that Guru Arjan invited him to lay the foundation stone for Darbar Sahib of Amritsar, the most historically significant gurdwara in the Sikh tradition.

The sixth in the line of Nanak, Guru Hargobind Sahib, established a mosque for Muslims in his town who had no other place to pray. The mosque, which was aptly named “Guru Ki Maseet (The Guru’s Mosque) is still standing in Punjab.

The Sikh Gurus incorporated the writings of another prominent South Asian Sufi -- Baba Farid -- into their compiled scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib. This means that, to this day, centuries later, Sikhs continue to sing, recite, and honor Baba Farid’s work on a regular basis.

It’s clear the the Sikh Gurus did not hate Muslims -- nor did they see befriending Muslims and respecting Islam as antithetical to their teachings. Their lives show us that. History shows us that.

Yes, it’s true that the Sikh worldview is different than that of Islam. That’s precisely why the Gurus decided to create a new religion. And this is important to note -- Sikhi is a distinct religion.

And yes, the early Sikh community had major tensions with political powers, some of whom were Muslim. But the source of tension was not an inherent clash between Islam and Sikhi as right-wing nationalists would have you believe. The tensions emerged from oppressive practices.

The Sikh Gurus believed deeply in love, service, and justice. They called on people to live as saint-soldiers and to stand up against tyranny and oppression. The Sikh Gurus modeled this in their own lives, and Sikhs have tried to emulate them ever since.

To summarize, there are many reasons why Sikhs stand as allies to their Muslim siblings, despite the painful consequences. We do this because it’s the right thing to do, because it helps shape the future we want, and because we have historical and theological precedents.