IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR CULTURE:

When Hurricane Katrina struck my hometown of New Orleans in 2005, I was tasked with leading a major Muslim relief effort. While Katrina brought many sights I won't forget, one of the most enduring and treasured was members of United Sikhs, a humanitarian and civil rights nonprofit, bolting this way and that across the floor of the Superdome, which had been turned into a massive shelter, assisting distressed people with a zeal unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

This despite the fact that the Sikh community in New Orleans is minimal, and I can't recall seeing a single Sikh Katrina victim in any of the shelters.

In fact the Sikhs, though they are the fifth largest faith group in the world, number only a few hundred thousand members in the entire U.S., most of whom live around New York City and in California. But in this rising climate of xenophobia, especially Islamophobia, they have become easy targets. Bigots often mistake Sikhs for Muslims due to their highly visible turbans, beards and scarves.

Despite the real harm this has caused Sikhs, they have consistently refused to throw the Muslim community under the bus by simply distancing themselves from Islam.

You may have seen the video of Canadian New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh, a candidate for prime minister, being heckled by a protester in 2017 for trying to "push Shariah" and being in "bed with the Muslim Brotherhood." His brother, Gurratan Singh, also a member of Parliament, went viral last month for how he handled an Islamophobic heckler outside a Muslim convention.

Gurratan tweeted afterward, "I will never respond to an Islamophobe by stating, 'I am not a Muslim.'"

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