Snap Fact #273 - President Obama Celebrates the Citizenship and Contributions of All Americans!

The Sikh religion is a 500 year old religion that was spawned in the Punjab region of Northern India. As the world’s 5th largest religion, there are some 20 million adherents with about a half million of them living in the United States. One of the religion’s founding principles speaks volumes for their philosophic base. Born in a country where the caste system held sway, the Sikh’s gurus preached equality of all. In that time and place this position was an almost foolhardy but courageous stand. Here is their basic philosophy right off their web site:

Philosophy and Beliefs

• • There is only One God. He is the same God for all people of all religions.

  • The soul goes through cycles of births and deaths before it reaches the human form. The goal of our life is to lead an exemplary existence so that one may merge with God. Sikhs should remember God at all times and practice living a virtuous and truthful life while maintaining a balance between their spiritual obligations and temporal obligations.

  • The true path to achieving salvation and merging with God does not require renunciation of the world or celibacy, but living the life of a householder, earning a honest living and avoiding worldly temptations and sins.

  • Sikhism condemns blind rituals such as fasting, visiting places of pilgrimage, superstitions, worship of the dead, idol worship etc.

  • Sikhism preaches that people of different races, religions, or sex are all equal in the eyes of God. It teaches the full equality of men and women. Women can participate in any religious function or perform any Sikh ceremony or lead the congregation in prayer.

Suffice it to say, the Sikhs are a gentle people with a humanistic live-and-let-live philosophy. That some hate-filled misinformed maniac mistook their traditional beard and turban garb for that of murderous terrorists is a first magnitude tragedy in itself. That this misguided freak was a murderous terrorist himself is the ultimate irony.

President Obama has led the nation in reaching out to our half-million Sikh neighbors and making these valuable citizens feel welcome and aware that the people of the United States feel their pain and share their grief.

Over the past 9 months The Rational Majority has been promoting its SNAP-CAP Campaign to spotlight the incredible record of accomplishments of President Barack Obama. A visit to our web site, www.therationalmajority.org will reward the viewer with an abundance of information on the subject. The focal point is the SNAP-CAP Archive which grows day-by-day now numbering over 270 items. The fact that we will have published 366 SNAP-CAPS by Election Day speaks eloquently about the depth and the breadth of the President’s successful accomplishments. Several themes run throughout the list of SNAP-CAPS that accurately reflect the President’s agenda and policies. One of these recurring motifs reflects the Chief Executive’s genuine care for people and his unshakeable belief in the value of our long heritage of being the world’s melting pot.

Many of our SNAP-CAPS focus on what the President has done to be inclusive and respectful to all our citizens. From the Native Americans who peopled our continent millennia before the rest of us poured into this land of plenty, up to the most recent group of new immigrants who raised their right hand to take the oath of allegiance to their new country today.

This deep commitment to our Constitution, our traditions, and our very way of life, was again demonstrated on August 7, 2012 when the President ordered all American flags to fly at half-mast in honor of the senseless murder of Indian Sikhs in Wisconsin. The President has taken the lead to bring the consciousness of the country into an outpouring of empathy for a hitherto little known community of our neighbors.

Perhaps the President’s leadership will help us find a slim silver lining in this dark cloud. When the American public understands the magnitude of the injustice that was wrought on these gentle and peaceful people, many of us will get to know these good neighbors better.

Ordering the flag to fly at half-mast had great symbolic significance in welcoming Sikhs into the main stream of American life and giving moral support to this bereaved community of some half million of our countrymen.