Jacob Carpenter

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

After a white nationalist opened fire on their temple in Oak Creek, killing six people in 2012, Milwaukee-area Sikhs saw how intolerance — even in the heart of one person — can devastate a community.

Years later, Sikhs continue to preach for peace and understanding. This weekend, that meant promoting their message with a small gathering at a lower east side Indian restaurant, organized by the Sikh Global Campaign for Identity.

"We have a large cooperation from the American people who are educated, who understand us, who love us," said Chaman Bawa, a Cudahy resident who attends the Oak Creek Sikh temple. "But with what happened here, some radical groups are out there. In that situation, we got some awakening."

The campaign, organized out of Rockford, Ill., is planning stops in Wisconsin, New York and California, home to some of the country's larger Sikh populations. Baba Ji, the campaign's president, said hate crimes against Sikhs continue to occur, in large part due to a simple confusion: Sikhs are not Muslims.

The challenge, Ji said, is to teach people that Sikhs who wear turbans and have long beards do not share a religious or cultural ideology with followers of Islam, a misconception shared by some intolerant Americans.

"They've shot them, they've thrown stones, they've made remarks to them," Ji said. "Some of us, our people, are not feeling safe."

In a 2015 survey commissioned by the National Sikh Campaign, 60% of the roughly 1,150 people questioned said they knew nothing about Sikhs. For the first time, the FBI in 2015 tracked the number of anti-Sikh hate crime incidents, reporting six of them across the country. That figure is dwarfed by the number of hate crime incidents reported against blacks (1,745), Jews (664), whites (613) and Muslims (257).

Parminder Singh, a trustee at the Oak Creek Sikh temple, said residents in many areas of greater Milwaukee have long been understanding of Sikhs. But Sikh children, he said, are the ones who most often face challenges today.

"Some people who live in Franklin, or who live in Oak Creek, they live in a community where they're fine," Parminder said. "But a lot of kids, when they go to school, they have a lot of problems. Some kids don't want to tell their parents what happened."

For Ji, constant communication and dissemination of information is the best way to reach those with intolerant or mistaken views of Sikhs.

"The Sikh religion is a totally friendly religion," Ji said. "We are not the enemy of the United States. We love the United States. Period."