Western naïveté about Sikh extremism encourages terror, betrays genuine Sikhs

Early in the morning on June 23, 1985, most of the 307 passengers on Air India 182 were finishing their breakfast or having coffee ahead of a scheduled refueling stop in London on their way to Delhi and Mumbai when a bomb placed by Sikh terrorists exploded. The plane disintegrated 9,400 metres above the Atlantic Ocean. All passengers and 22 crew members perished. Until the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, the attack was the fifth deadliest air disaster and the deadliest aircraft bombing.

While the September 11 attacks are seared onto the American consciousness, few Americans remember the Air India 182 bombing or attack, perhaps because few if any Americans were on the flight. In contrast, the deadliest attack on American soil immediately sparked scholarly, political, and public attention toward radical Islam. Ordinary Americans and law enforcement learned that not every mosque prized spirituality nor was every advocacy organisation that cloaked itself in communal values sincere. Auditors discovered that behind their religious veneer, some charities promoted a terror agenda.

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The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and its sister mosque in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, nurtured radicalism. Their most famous alumni included the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon attack and Abdulrahman Alamoudi, convicted of his role in a plot to assassinate then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. More recently, the Ritchie Torres mosque in the Bronx has taken the crown as a catalyst for extremism. Meanwhile, as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Islamic Society of North America claimed to be civil rights or communal umbrella groups, both were thinly disguised Muslim Brotherhood fronts, accepting foreign cash and apologising for terror. Court investigation found charities like the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were actually Hamas fronts.

Following the Air India 182 bombing and the recent upsurge of Sikh militancy in Canada and California, there has been little corollary attention to Sikh extremism. Canada may continue to ignore the problems of Sikh extremism because of both naïveté and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cynical political calculations. Pro-Khalistan activists and Sikh extremists falsely claim they have electoral power; Trudeau, whose understanding of the Sikh community is both superficial and condescending, believes them.

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If only Canada and the United States learned from the United Kingdom. Five years ago, the British government appointed an Independent Faith Engagement Adviser to recommend how the government should engage with religious groups. The resulting Bloom Review identified the problem succinctly. “There are three types of believers,” it found. “The first are ‘true believers’ who, regardless of their faith, are sincere, devout and peaceful. The second are ‘non-believers’ who, like true believers, are generally sincere, peaceful and decent.” The problem was the third group: “Make-believers are generally the cause of most of the problems that the government encounters in the faith space. Make-believers are often motivated by ego, money, prestige or power and abuse their position to promote themselves or their causes, clothing them with religion to give them divine legitimacy.”

The majority of British Sikhs are true believers. The latest census shows England and Wales alone are home to more than a half million Sikhs. Sikh immigrants inaugurated Britain’s first gurdwara in 1908, the first of 250. The largest gurdwaras today can accommodate 3,000 worshippers. On average, British Sikhs enjoy a higher income and standard of living than the average British Christian.

An extremist problem looms, though. Most British gurdwaras elect their leadership from among the local community. As British authorities focused on Islamist extremism and a growing Neo-Nazi threat, they ignored a minority fringe of extremists, pro-Khalistan activists, and other “make-believers” who used threats, extortion, and violence to hijack gurdwaras. Their general ignorance of Sikhism led to a failure to differentiate between gurdwaras that embraced traditional Sikhism and community values with those that extremists hijacked as a cover for malign political activities.

The Bloom Report recommended common sense so lacking in Canada and California. Addressing hijacked gurdwaras, it found, “The subversive, aggressive and sectarian actions of some pro-Khalistan activists and the subsequent negative effect on wider Sikh communities should not be tolerated.”

The worst offenders are pro-Khalistan activists. Sikhs complained to government surveyors that the activists abuse and bully those who do not share their opinions. As militants victimise the authentic Sikh community, the extremists rely on the government ignorance. Too often, politicians believe the pro-Khalistan activists’ exaggerated claims to have power over the ballot box or candidate selection. When the British government in the past, like Canadian politicians today, engaged with the militants, they ignored the silent majority.

The Bloom Report investigation noted that Khalistan extremists increasingly demand independence within Indian Punjab but omit Pakistani territory belies their true sponsors and agendas.

More than two decades after 9/11, few in Washington take self-appointed Muslim spokesmen at face value. That groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have embraced and apologized Hamas so whole-heartedly only reinforces for Americans the lessons learned about how proxies for totalitarian ideologies and terror groups take advantage of democratic societies’ naiveté.

Today’s Khalistan movement in Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom is simply the natural evolution of a strategy hewn decades ago by the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda. Today, the United Kingdom recognises it. It is time the United States and Canada follow. The proper policy for American and Canadian policymakers is not to appease the loudest Sikh extremist, but to recognise that those militants pose a grave and growing threat to peaceful, sincere Sikh communities. To tolerate Khalistan extremism is not to honour religious freedom; it is to undermine it.

Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.