The tragedy of the terror attack of 9/11 that killed nearly 3000 human beings was devastating and there was more tragedy to unfold in the days and months that followed. There was a wave of islamophobia that swept across the United States manifesting in hate speech and hate crimes against Muslims. Such was the ignorance in that hatred, that it indiscriminately attacked anyone who looked like a Muslim – people from Asia, people with turbans and anyone with brown skin. In fact, the first casualty was a hate crime against a Sikh man who was murdered.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed because someone wanted to “go out and shoot some towel-heads” after the 9/11 terror attacks. “He was killed simply because of the way he looked,” says a plaque outside the gas station where Sodhi was killed.
After many of these attacks on Sikhs, some of the community members spoke to Indian American standup comic and social commentator Hasan Minaj about it. “Why don't you just go “Hey—I'm not Muslim,”’ ask Minaj. The reply expresses solidarity for other Muslims unfairly and cruelly targeted just for their identity and is heartening.
The message is that it is as wrong to target innocent Muslims for something that someone else calling themselves Muslims has done; as much as it is to target innocent Sikhs. Saying I am not Muslim, is the deflection of the hate; a way of saying ‘don’t attack me (only) because I am not Muslim.
It is important for people to acknowledge that if they view every person belonging to one community with hatred and fear, this is prejudice. In this case, it is islamophobia but it could as easily have been some other type of hatred: against a religious identity, nationality, colour of skin or race.
Sindhu Vee is also a standup comic; she is a British Indian comic who expressed her support for the generosity of spirit shown here.
As the old saying goes, none of us is safe until all of us are safe. The fact is that if one innocent person is attacked for something they didn’t do, any of us could be attacked though we may be as innocent. It is the nature of hatred that it will find reasons to hate and that endangers us all.
In a hate crime such as the one Balbir Singh Sodhi was a victim of, the murderer was clearly a racist and wanted to 'punish' someone he saw as different, as the ‘other’.
By definition, prejudice is about seeing people not as individuals but instead judging them based on only one aspect of their identity. So Sodhi may have been a Sikh person at a petrol pump and another Muslim man may have been a teacher in a school or a college. However, for the person who hates, both are just people of colour and as such deserving of his hatred. This is why prejudice and hate are so dangerous – they discriminate based on identity. They hate indiscriminately. And they do both out of sheer ignorance.
It is not enough that we do not subscribe to and promote hate and prejudice. We have to actively reject and counter it when we see it around us. That is what the Sikh people in the Hasan Minaj video are trying to do. Because, as we know, none of us is safe until we are all safe.
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