Confronting Anti-Sikh Hate in the United States

In our efforts to build a multi-faith movement against hate, Interfaith Alliance wants to bring attention to an underexamined issue facing our country: anti-Sikh hate. Since the start of the new administration, there have been a number of incidents targeting Sikhs. In one of their notable attacks on religious freedom, the Department of Defense worked to crack down on exemptions for Sikh religious expressions in the United States military, and a Sikh religious leader was mocked by a sitting legislator after delivering a prayer before Congress.

Over 500,000 Sikhs are living across the United States, with large communities in California, New York and Washington. Sikh immigrants began arriving in the United States from South Asia at the turn of the 20th century in search of good jobs and farmland. After initially welcoming them, the government began to pass laws halting immigration from South Asia and elsewhere and creating legal mechanisms to deny them land ownership. Fear-mongering around immigrants taking up jobs also led to significant acts of violence, including a mob attack of white men on Sikh rail workers in Bellingham, Washington, in 1907. However, the Sikh community persevered, and in 1912, Sikh immigrants opened the first gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) in Stockton, California.

While incomplete, hate crimes data from the FBI remains one of the only sources available for documenting national hate crime trends and help us understand the scope of the threat Sikhs face. According to the FBI’s 2023 report on hate crimes, Sikhs are one of the three most targeted religious groups in the United States, and they have remained among the most-targeted groups for years since the FBI started tracking anti-Sikh hate in 2014. Some Sikhs are targeted as a result of their religion, while other aspects of their intersectional identity can also come into play: their skin color, accent or language, or race and ethnicity.

As I documented in the Interfaith Alliance report, Together Against Hate, while there is significant overlap between anti-Sikh hate and anti-Muslim bigotry, they are two distinct phenomena. After 9/11, there was an increase in both forms of hatred because many people wrongly conflated the Sikh articles of faith—including turbans and beards—with images on TV they had come to associate with violence in the Middle East. Though largely unknown, one of the first people killed in an Islamophobic attack after 9/11 was actually Sikh. But even though anti-Muslim bigotry often causes hate against Sikh people, it is important to understand their experiences as distinct. In 2012, a white supremacist with neo-Nazi ties attacked a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, which at the time was one of the deadliest attacks on a house of worship in American history. The history of the Sikh-American experience has been about persevering through these challenges and continuing to organize and advocate for their communities.

As we continue growing the multi-faith pro-democracy movement, it’s important to tackle growing anti-Sikh hate in the context of inclusive, multifaceted approaches to countering hate-based violence.

Zev Mishell is the Senior Programs Strategist at Interfaith Alliance

The views and beliefs expressed in this post and all Interfaith Alliance blogs are those held by the author of each respective piece. To learn more about the organizational views, policies, and positions of Interfaith Alliance on any issues, please contact [email protected].