Obama’s Temple Dilemma

I don’t know whether it says more about Obama’s fear of controversy or America’s ignorance that the president may actually skip visiting one of the biggest attractions in India– all because some people might mistakenly think he’s wearing Muslim clothing, and consequently might think he’s Muslim (again).

The place: India’s “Golden Temple” (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar.  It’s the holiest site for adherents of Sikhism, one of the largest organized religions in the world with about 20 million followers (and also one of India’s major religions).  The Golden Temple is widely acknowledged to be a masterpiece of architecture and design and is one of the top tourist attractions in India.

The controversy: to enter a Sikh temple (known as a gurdwara), visitors must cover their heads.  Reports say that the White House nixed a visit to Amritsar because of fears that pictures of Obama with his head covered would circulate and give fuel to the minority of Americans (and others) who still think Obama is a Muslim– even though Sikhism is a completely separate religion from Islam and even though the headcovering wouldn’t necessarily have resembled something a Muslim might wear into a mosque, anyway.

So, is Obama scared of appearing to be a Muslim?  No one is saying for certain.  But if the White House holds fast to its decision not to allow Obama to visit the temple, it will be a great opportunity missed.

After 9/11, Sikhs were targets of hate crimes and threats from those who thought they were Muslim or terrorists (or both).  The Sikh Coalition has been working for the last 9 years to educate and inform Americans about the beliefs and traditions of Sikhism.  It would have been a great event for such a prominent leader to visit the Golden Temple and show Sikhism for what it is (a peaceful and generally stable religion for millions of people).

There are always going to be people who think you’re a Muslim, Mr. Obama, no matter what you do.  Stop giving in to them (especially when the visit was going to be AFTER the midterm elections) and seize an opportunity to educate by making a gesture of peace toward a major religion.

The Ayodhya Conflict

It’s a holy site for two religious whose adherents have been fighting for decades, sometimes with deadly results.

No, this isn’t somewhere in Israel or the Palestinian territories: it’s in Uttar Pradesh state in India, at a site just as hotly-contested as others elsewhere that get much more Western media attention.

The site is the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, a city in north-central India.  The mosque dates to the 16th century, but local Hindus say there was a temple there first– and that the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram, one of the most important dieties in the Hindu religion.

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In 1992, violent clashes after a political rally left thousands dead and the mosque destroyed.  Hindu and Muslim groups have been locked in a court battle ever since, and there have been other deadly clashes, as well, though not on the same scale.

Last month, as the country geared up for the international Commonwealth Games, the Allahabad court ruled that the site would be divided into three sections, two Hindu and one Muslim. Commentators called the ruling a milestone, and an uneasy peace seemed to hold, with no outbreaks of violence reported.

But what was more remarkable were the actions that the Indian government took to prevent any violence from breaking out.

The government took the extraordinary step of banning some text messaging (bulk messaging and multimedia messaging) and arresting thousands of people– pre-emptively.  No threats of violence had been reported, no bombs were uncovered, no suspicious texts were found.  Most remarkably, very few news reports even mentioned these actions had taken place.  Information about the government’s actions was scarce in online media.

The attitude seemed to be: better that some freedoms are restricted than some lives lost– this was a perfectly natural step!  We’ve seen this before, of course– notably in the U.S., for example, during World War II and much more recently during the war on terror when dozens of prisoners were kept in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Some of them are still there.  Presumably, the prisoners in India were shortly released– although news on this, too, was no where to be found.

So what happened to India being a democracy, with human rights to uphold and respect?  As the largest democracy in the world (by population), and a leader in Asia, it should be embarrassed at the actions of its security forces.  No matter what its size, actually, it should be embarrassed: democracies shouldn’t be in the business of arresting people without cause, or out of fear of what might happen. And the media shouldn’t be giving India a free pass, either.  Where’s the outrage?

Parallels with History

“Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles,” begins today’s New York Times article about the similarities between protests against the state’s oldest Catholic church at the time it was built, and the protests the past few months over the proposed Islamic Center downtown.

It’s worth remembering that every generation has its own “hated” group– and Catholics were the chosen group to be reviled, discriminated against and shunned for many years in the United States.  Now we’ve moved on to Muslims.

Read the entire article here.  The pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Manhattan, the target of scorn when it was built 225 years ago and now just a few blocks from the proposed Muslim center, should be applauded for promoting interfaith harmony.