More than a dozen people stood outside the Hyatt hotel in downtown Sacramento on Tuesday to show support for victims of the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting.
Kazman Zaidi, president of a Sacramento taxi cab association, the host for the rally, said he wanted to give the public a chance to stand together.
One of the cab drivers present, Harbhajan Singh, was the victim of a hate-crime assault in November 2010 in Sacramento. The man convicted of the crime received 13 years in state prison in June last year after admitting the attack.
"People look and think 'Oh, he has a towel on his head, he must be just like Osama bin Laden,' " Singh said, pointing to his turban. After 9/11, he said, members of the Sikh community were harassed by some who thought they were Muslim.
Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, likened the misidentification problems to those that occurred in America after Pearl Harbor, saying that Chinese and Japanese people were accused of committing crimes they had no role in.
"The same is going on in the Muslim and Sikh community," she said.
Mohamed Ali, chapter coordinator for the Sacramento Valley Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the council is standing in solidarity with the Sikh community.
"The prayers of the Muslim community will go out to the victims during this month of Ramadan," Ali said.
"It's just shocking that in 2012 we still have this kind of intolerance," said Matthew Roy, a lawyer showing his support.
Roy said that legal punishment isn't a suitable deterrent for these kinds of attacks.
"Instead," he said, "people need to learn to empathize with those who are unlike themselves."
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
• Read more articles by David Ruiz
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
Order Reprint
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.