Washington Post
By Sarah Kaplan
September 10, 2015
“Terrorist!” “Bin Laden!” “Go back to your country!” came the shouts from the other car.
Inderjit
Singh Mukker, a father of two on his way to the grocery store in his
Chicago suburb, pulled over when the vehicle in front kept tailgating
him, according to the
Sikh Coalition. The 53-year-old Sikh man, who wears a beard and turban,
expected that the person in the other car would just drive past.
Instead,
the Coalition says, the other driver got out and stormed toward him,
reaching into Mukker’s car and repeatedly punching him in the face.
Mukker lost consciousness
and had to be taken to the hospital, where he received treatment for a
fractured cheekbone, bruising and blood loss and six stitches for the
lacerations on his face.
Police
in Darien, Ill., 30 miles southwest of downtown Chicago, said that the
incident Tuesday night is being investigated as a hate crime, according
to NBC. The alleged
assailant is in police custody.
Mukker,
who was released from the hospital Wednesday, gave a statement to the
Sikh Coalition, the nonprofit advocacy group providing his legal
representation.
“No
American should be afraid to practice their faith in our country,” he
said. “I’m thankful for the swift response of authorities to apprehend
the individual, but without
this being fully investigated as a hate crime, we risk ignoring the
horrific pattern of intolerance, abuse and violence that Sikhs and other
minority communities in this country continue to face.”
According
to Simran Jeet Singh, a senior religion fellow at the Coalition working
on Mukker’s case, Sikh Americans have been increasingly victimized in
hate crimes in
the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
“For
Sikh Americans, the unique markers of religious identity — the turban,
the beard — these markers are associated with the markers of terrorism,”
he said.
In other words, “People see a Sikh and construe them as the enemy.”
On
Sept. 15, 2001, four days after 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot and
killed outside his gas station in Arizona. The gunman mistook the
49-year-old Sikh, an immigrant
from India, for an Arab, and said he killed him in retaliation for the
attacks. The attacker was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
In
the following month, the Sikh Coalition recorded at least 300 cases of
violence and discrimination against Sikhs in the U.S. The next 14 years
have seen hundreds more.
In 2009, the Coalition found that 9 percent of Sikh adults in New York
have been physically assaulted for their religion — usually by people,
who in addition to their violent vigilantism, apparently remain unaware
of the distinction between Sikhism and Islam.
“Osama bin Laden” and “terrorist” are common slurs.
This
summer, the Sikh temple in Wisconsin where six people were fatally shot
by a white supremacist in 2012 decided to lock its doors. The community
was shaken by the
deadly shooting at a historic black church in Charleston in June, and
felt it was no longer safe to stay open to anyone. Now, those who arrive
for daily services have to ring a buzzer to be allowed inside.
“It
used to be in the Sikh religion, all doors stayed open,” Balhair S.
Dulai, vice president of the temple, told the Washington Post. “But what
happened here, and what
happened in South Carolina — these things could happen anywhere. No one
is immune.”
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