Video of Canadian Sikh politician Jagmeet Singh's calm response to racist rant by woman takes social media by storm

A Canadian Sikh politician Jagmeet Singh’s calm response to an anti-Islam, anti-Muslim tirade by a woman at a campaign event in Brampton, Ontario has taken social media by storm and received much approbation. Singh, a frontrunner for Canada’s third largest party, the Left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), was speaking at a campaign outreach event “JagMeet and Greet” when the incident took place, according to NDTV. [caption id=“attachment_4029575” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screenshot of the exchange between Jagmeet Singh and the woman. Facebook/ Brampton Focus[/caption] The woman, who identified herself as Jennifer in the video, thrust herself in front of Singh before he was about to speak and said, “We know you’re in bed with Sharia. We know you’re in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood.” Sharia is a canonical set of laws in Islam and unrelated to Sikhism, the religion which Singh comes from. Despite efforts by the organisers and supporters to take her aside, Jennifer refused to be removed and threatened to call the police. Instead of responding aggressively to her boisterous attack, Singh calmly responded to the crowd: “We believe in love and courage… We don’t want to be intimidated by hate, we don’t want hatred to ruin a positive event… So let’s show people how to treat someone with love: We welcome you. We love you. We support you.” A video of the exchange went viral and has received over 4 lakh views and shared over 3,700 times on Facebook. Brampton Focus, a local news outlet, caught the exchange on camera and uploaded it on its Facebook page which can be viewed here:

The video shows his supporters chanting “Jagmeet” and “love and courage” before breaking into applause. The woman stormed off after her ranting. Addressing the crowd, Singh later said: “You know growing up as a brown-skin, turbaned, bearded man that I’ve faced things like this before. There’s going to be other obstacles that we’re going to face and we’re going to face them with love and courage.” Singh is a 38-year-old politician who sports a beard, wears a turban and carries a kirpan with him, according to NDTV.  According to  VICE Canada, such instances were reflective of a growing sense of anti-Islam, anti-immigration and anti-diversity movement spreading across Canada at the moment. The presence of far-right groups formed around these issues organised numerous rallies against immigration, Muslims and, multiculturalism.