The Shooting At The Sikh Temple

I was getting ready for worship at my own congregation in Moscow when I heard about the shooting at a Milwaukee-area Sikh temple that killed six, including the non-Sikh gunman, and injured several more.  My heart breaks for the Sikh community, which, since 9/11, has experienced more than 700 reported, confirmed attacks by people driven blind with hatred for people they evidently believe to be Muslim.

It's horrific that "believed to be Muslim" is a justification for any attack on anyone, by anyone, and that must be established before noting that Sikhs are not Muslim, not Hindu, and not, by virtue of their sacred turbans and long beards, any more likely than anyone else to be terrorists.  Sikhs are monotheists; some 27 million live across India and other Asian countries, including the United States, where they live, work, and worship in greater fear over the last decade than any group ought ever to have to.

The Church bears some responsibility for the violence against them and against Muslims, given the hysterical, untrue, hateful rhetoric streaming from the conservative elements of the so-called Body of Christ.  I pray the Church in Milwaukee -- indeed, across the country -- rises up and not only condemns the shooting, but stands with the Sikh community as it begins to heal.  A good start would be to roundly condemn, in the example of Senator John McCain, the bigoted babbling of Christian right-wingers like Michelle Bachmann, whose obsession with finding a "Muslim terrorist" around every corner has lead her to bear false witness against people like Huma Amedin, an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, by every account, a decent, patriotic American woman.

People who stoke anti-Muslim bigotry, which, in its most ignorant and sloppy form spills over onto Sikhs, are not decent, patriotic Americans.  The time has come for their churches to rebuke them as considerably less than decent, faithful Christians.  May it happen soon, before anybody at worship is terrorized ever again by someone who knows little but hates much.