Abstract

My presentations topic will be on the topics of violence, intolerance, tolerance, and acceptance all within the religious perspective. The two religious traditions that I explored for these topics are Sikhism and Islam. My focus for these topics and religious traditions are in the context of the greater Milwaukee community. However, I discuss how these topics exist in the rest of the US and world to better understand why they occur in Milwaukee. In other words, what is the connection between religious violence toward Sikhs in Milwaukee to the stereotypes and political issues that exist in the United States? These are the issues or events that I attempt to unfold and understand within my analysis.

For each religious tradition I interviewed one person to represent it. I used these interviews to both enhance and guide my research on these communities’ relationship to the topics. My project consists of a presentation slide show that depicts the research and the two case studies from the religious traditions. Along, with the presentation will be a several page analysis that will be converted in to the presentation. Through this project it is hoped to gain a better understanding of these religious topics’ effects on religious communities and the communities they coincide with. Further, it is expected to see how these effects and relationships in Milwaukee fit into the national and global level. This better understanding of religious violence and intolerance will hopefully promote people’s awareness of them as well as to help fix these issues. On the other side, bringing people to recognize the acceptance toward religions and spirituality groups would provide positive examples of how communities can overcome adversity that could lead into people’s own awareness or experience to be proactive.