Immediately after the London terrorist bombings there were plenty of comments left on numerous SM posts that all seemed to express a particular opinion that was VERY distasteful to me, and to some other readers.  To paraphrase, the opinion went like this: “We need to educate the public better so that when a racist or bigoted backlash occurs following a terrorist attack, they will be wise enough to target Muslims instead of people that only look like Muslims.”  I thought that such an opinion would find no support at all but I learned that I was wrong.  Dave at DNSI points to an article in the Guardian that shows just how wrong I was.  Some Sikhs and Hindus facing the prospect of a backlash are taking unusual approaches:

The explanation as to why Sikhs and Hindus are targeted…is quite simple: “your average hate-crime perpetrator isn’t going to stop and ask what religion you are before attacking you - or even care, for that matter, about such distinctions.”

If you travel on London’s public-transport system you may have spotted them: stickers and T-shirts with “Don’t freak, I’m a Sikh” written across them. On the tube, they tend to be greeted with wry smiles, but they have sparked heated debate on Sikh online message boards. “Don’t wear these T-shirts, they’re anti-Muslim,” writes one contributor. “We should wear the T-shirts,” says another. “We need to think of ourselves first - let the Muslims take care of themselves.”

In the weeks following July 7 it was widely reported that hate crimes against Asians had increased dramatically. They were not just attacks on Muslim Asians, of course: they were attacks on Asians of all faiths. The fact is that your average hate-crime perpetrator isn’t going to stop and ask what religion you are before attacking you - or even care, for that matter, about such distinctions. But this point seems to have been lost on the media. There’s been a huge focus on the impact on Britain’s Muslim community, but the plight of Britain’s 560,000 Hindus and 340,000 Sikhs has been largely ignored.

Sure, it’s easy for me to judge.  I sit here safe and don’t have to endure suspicious eyes checking me out on the Underground every day.  Still, this rubs the very heart of me.  I think these t-shirts should all be burned.  Prior to WWII, Hitler forced the Jews to wear the Star of David on their clothes so as to single them out with ease.  Here it seems some citizens are volunteering for that sort of indignity in order to make their lives a bit easier, at the price of a higher ideal.  We shouldn’t be declaring that we are different from Muslims.  If anything we should be educating people on how similar they are to us.  I fully support declaring that you are Sikh, loud and proud.  To do so in order to differentiate yourself from a Muslim, specifically to avoid a potential hate crime, is just loud without the proud.

This doesn’t mean that Hindus have had an easy time of it. “There are issues of security for Hindu temples, Hindu students at university and Hindus walking on the streets who risk being assaulted,” says Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Britain, which speaks for 240 Hindu organisations.

Ishvar Guruswamy is a Hindu who has lived in Kent for 32 years. He had never experienced racism until shortly after the attempted bombings in London, when a group of teenagers spat at him while shouting, “Bomb, bomb, bomb.” A few days later, a family at his local supermarket shouted the same thing at him. When he told his sister what had happened, her advice was simple - to shave off his beard and wear a large crucifix so no one would mistake him for a Muslim.

So what’s the alternative?  Dave suggests an approach:

This debate is identical to the one that took place within the Sikh community after 9/11. After the terrorist attacks, some of Sikhs in the United States, myself included, began to discuss how we should respond to the backlash and protect the Sikh community. Combating ignorance through education was, of course, of utmost importance. While we wished to inform others as to who Sikhs were and that the turban was a symbol of the Sikh faith, we ultimately did not want to send the message that, ‘now that you know we are Sikhs, leave us alone, but going after Muslims is acceptable.’ Thus, we settled on a two-pronged approach: the first more of an isolationist one, namely to educate and inform others about Sikhs and Sikhism; the second was to submit a broad appeal for tolerance, emcompassing not only Sikhs, but Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, and anyone else who may be perceived as a “terrorist.” This is not to say that this position is morally superior to the one that attempts to draw a thicker line between Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims, as one can understand the more pragmatic approach of protecting one’s own community that one is a member of.

Also, Sunny has more on this topic here.