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Found 17 results

  1. WJKK WJKF It's been brought to my attention that there is an interfaith marriage that is due to take place in a well known London Gurdwara. I want to know what council or group I can report this to so they can initiate preventative action against this Gurdwara that has sold Sikh values for money. Please respond with the highest impact factor groups who can influence this from not going ahead in Gurus house. WJKK WJKF
  2. Sikh24 reported that Gurdwaras were opening their doors to Manchester jihadi attack victims, and also Sikh cabbies were giving free rides to victims. No biggie, right? Wrong. It seems that at least some Muslims and their sympathizers were upset at highlighting this fact. Check out this tweet by a Sikh about Sikh cabbies giving free rides: https://mobile.twitter.com/SinghLions/status/866930974369632256/photo/1 @dineshjoshi70 applauds @SinghLions and says: Gurudwaras worldwide are messengers of humanity . So are the Sikhs and so do some others. But not Twitter user @ShazU_91. She asks why identify the religion of the good samaritans?: https://mobile.twitter.com/ShazU_91/status/866937798686912512?p=p and: https://mobile.twitter.com/ShazU_91/status/866941338742378496?p=p Actually what really pisses off Miss ShazU_91 is that normal people appreciate Sikhs' warm and giving personalities and the fact that they are not bombing average British people, and people are figuring out the difference between Sikhs and Muslim, even people like Katie Hopkins in her latest article: What Miss ShazU_91 wants is a united colored peoples front where whenever the latest Islamic terror attack occurs, everybody who isn't white (West Indians, Chinese and other orientals, aboriginals from various places, Indians including Sikhs, Pakistanis, middle-easterners, Africans, North Africans, Latinos, etc.) get lumped into a single category, and no further distinctions are made. And I don't think we should give her what she wants.
  3. WJKK WJKF I have been doing some comparative reading across some of the major religions - and other than Hindu Yogic schools (get to that in a moment) - Sikhi alone stands unique in its tolerance and acceptance and indeed protection for any and all to have religious freedom. While historically there is the example of Guru Tegh Bahadur - ji, the modern example is that of the Sikh Coalition fighting alongside jews and others that are being oppressed. The Gurbani from "Koi bol-ay ram ram" to "Jineh toh-ay dhiya-yo tineh" also backs this up with no two ways about it. But somehow those who choose not to believe in the Divine at all - are criticized somewhat harshly. "Jo sir saa-ee na niv-ae so sir kup utaar" In the Hindu Samkhya school of thought - there is emphasis on praman shaabad and anu-maan - there is a lot of appealing to reason and inference and the premise of Devta or even Ishta Devta is not given a lot of importance. In fact some of those from outside that have studied it - say that it gets as close to an atheist belief as one can. I was just wondering if any one from the saadh sangat had insight.
  4. Guest

    In dilemma - faith and love

    Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh sangat ji! I have been coming to this forum to read about various things but this is the first time I'm posting anything, and it happens to be a request for the sangat's help on my dilemma. I (24, male, non-amritdhaari) have been in a relationship with a non-Sikh girl for the past 1 year and 8 months. I have never been in any other relationship, neither have I ever thought I would ever be. I in fact used to think it is something not destined for me and I was content with having an arranged marriage as well. But I happened to meet this girl. I have always thought that this is the girl i want to marry and she too sees me as her future husband. I have been interested in Sikhi and wanting to grow my Sikhi since about the age of 18, trying to gain knowledge about it, but I never really was inclined to keep a rehat. It was until AFTER 1.25 years of ALREADY having been in this relationship, that with Guru's kirpa I realized that I need to actually maintain a rehat actively and I had this inner urge to follow Guru Sahib. Now coming to my dilemma, I honestly love this girl and she loves me. But now that I'm trying to live my life the way our Guru has taught us, I have this doubt whether this relationship will be acceptable to Guru Sahib. Had I been already on the path of Sikhi seriously BEFORE meeting her, I would probably not look at any girl with those kind of prospects in mind. But I'm well past that stage now, and I do not want to hurt her by leaving her abruptly saying "my Guru does not want me to marry a Non-Sikh". She has supported me and does not have any qualms with me being serious within my SIkhi even though I was not "like this" when she started liking me. I want to earn the blessings of Guru maharaj but I do not know whether Guru Sahib would be happy with their Sikh breaking an innocent heart. My question is whether Guru maharaj deems it just to break the heart of the one you love if it is for the purpose of keeping rehit. I want to reiterate the fact that I had been in love with her BEFORE I started trying to keep a rehat seriously. I want to hear what advice the sangat has for me. HUMBLY REQUEST YOU TO PLEASE PROVIDE GURBANI PANGTIS OR HISTORICAL EVIDENCES, WHICH YOU BASE YOUR ADVICE UPON. I would like to request you to be polite in your words if possible. Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ki fateh!
  5. Why does no one raise this issue? Are parents really happy that their kids do this? Why dont they stop them? What happened to arrange marriages?
  6. A few weeks ago someone exposed the gyani who was prepared to perform anti-sikh religious anad karaj marriage to non-sikhs was it this guy? if so can we hold a nationwide boycott against this guy and excommunicate him from us. http://sangatshop.org/sukhmani_sahib_bhai_manjit_singh_ji
  7. In 2015 there was a lot of media coverage in the UK on the topic of interfaith marriages, this included a number of weddings that were disrupted by protestors. It has all gone very quiet and I am not sure what the final verdict was? Was there any formal communication from the Akaal Takht or another authority that ruled out any mixed marriages? Are gurdwaras still doing mixed marriages? are wedding still being stopped by protesters? Does anyone know what the status is?
  8. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-british-sikh-men-trying-to-stop-women-marrying-outside-their-religion-a6679001.html The British Sikh men trying to stop women marrying outside their religion Britain’s Sikhs, long seen as a minority success story, are plagued by a faction of young men ‘defending’ their vision of the culture – and seeking to impose their views by attacking the nuptials of women who marry ‘out’ Sunny Hundal Sunday 4 October 2015 14:27 BST 70 comments It was meant to be the happiest day of their lives – a celebration of modern multicultural Britain at the biggest Sikh gurdwara (temple) in the Western world. On 7 August 2015, in west London, a British Sikh bride and her Polish Christian groom sat together and absorbed the religious blessings at their wedding ceremony. She wore a cream and red dress, while he wore a red turban, in keeping with Sikh traditions. But that morning, 20 uninvited men were determined to put a stop to the wedding. They stormed upstairs to the main hall and demanded that the priests end the ceremony, hurling insults at people who objected. One of them told a priest that, if their demands weren’t met, he would get 1,000 of his friends to come to the temple within the hour. The police were called and eventually the couple were forced to proceed into a hurried ceremony, while the protesters watched and took pictures of them to publish online. READ MORE Wedding between Sikh bride and non-Sikh groom stopped by 'thugs' This was not an isolated incident. The next weekend an interfaith wedding in Lozells, Birmingham, nearly turned into a mass brawl after protesters tried to stop it and, again, the police had to be called. The following weekend, another wedding in Coventry only managed to go ahead after some negotiations with the disrupters. In each case, the bride was a Sikh woman and the groom a non-Sikh man. Under the media radar, such disruptions of interfaith marriages at Sikh gurdwaras have become worryingly commonplace across Britain. In July 2013, a Sikh woman and her Christian husband in Swindon were locked out of their own wedding by 40 protesters, who afterwards posted a gleeful video online of the bride’s mother pleading with them to stop. When the BBC Asian Network looked into the controversy that year, its reporter met a family who’d had their windows smashed as a warning about an upcoming marriage. Most were too afraid to say anything in public. But not Sim Kaur. One of the very few Sikh women willing to speak about her experience, she says: “Our gurdwaras are run by men and the protesters are all men. All the cancellations I’ve heard about have been of Sikh women marrying non-Sikh men or men not born into the Sikh religion and I doubt that’s a coincidence. I do believe it’s a faith issue, but it’s also about gender and race.” A wedding party is refused entry to a Sikh temple in Swindon in 2012 Her wedding to her partner, Sam, was disrupted earlier this year, even though he had made an effort to learn about Sikhism and adopted Singh in his name, under guidelines laid out by the Sikh Council UK, an organisation set up in 2010 to deal with issues affecting the Sikh community in Britain and Europe. “Isn’t it better,” she asks, “that we teach our partners and their friends and family about this ceremony and invite them in, rather than building a wall and creating a divide?” Sikh radicalism is rarely debated in the media. British Sikhs – who number about 400,000 – are largely seen as a model minority who aren’t embroiled in controversies or plagued by extremists as Muslims are. But scratch the surface and there are signs of a growing divide between the liberal and more conservative Sikhs here, and the controversy around interfaith marriages goes to the heart of the problem. Until I posted several videos of wedding disruptions to my Facebook page last month, there seemed to be barely any debate about why they were happening. Immediately, I was subjected to a torrent of abuse and threats, but also heard from dozens of Sikhs (mostly women) who had faced a similar kind of intimidation. Most British Sikhs I have spoken to feel shocked and embarrassed that weddings in the UK are being disrupted in this way, but are usually too worried about the backlash from fundamentalists to say so openly – and it is a very British phenomenon. The controversy has barely affected India, home to 90 per cent of the world’s 20 million Sikhs, where interfaith marriages (especially to Hindus) are common. One might, then, conclude that this issue was about race and the diaspora – but the experience of North America, where nearly a million Sikhs live, says differently. Amardeep Singh, associate professor at Lehigh University in Philadelphia, says that they have a more relaxed approach there, largely because there aren’t such concentrations of Sikhs as there are in London and Birmingham. “Sikh communities in the US are so suburban and spatially dispersed. Most of us commute some distance by car just to reach the nearest gurdwara.” A Sikh wedding in 1965 In the UK, then, we seem to be dealing with people who believe they have sufficient density of numbers to preserve some kind of cultural purity if they cleave to the example of the Sikh homeland (where, in fact, such fundamentalism is rare). However, those who support the disruptions say they are not opposed to interfaith marriages per se, but are only trying to enforce religious guidelines. In 1950, Sikh scholars and priests in India agreed on a code of conduct, after multiple attempts, to define what it meant to be a Sikh and what obligations should be placed on followers. It stated that the Sikh wedding ceremony (the Anand Karaj) could only take place between two Sikhs of the opposite sex. Shamsher Singh, of the National Sikh Youth Federation, says it objects to this religious ceremony being appropriated by non-Sikhs. “They can have prayers inside the gurdwara, they can have part of the function inside a gurdwara, just not the religious ceremony. That’s reserved for those of the Sikh faith.” Others say this attitude ignores Sikh history. Amandeep Madra, co-founder of the UK Punjab Heritage Association, says that, until recently “Sikh traditions were highly pluralistic, with a willingness to learn and coexist with other concordant traditions. This is one of the most culturally appealing aspects of Sikhism in a modern, multicultural world. However, there has always been a more fearful voice that is threatened by the danger of being assimilated and indistinguishable from others.” So the rise of Sikh fundamentalism in the UK isn’t just an attempt to enforce rules: it is also the expression of a worry among young rank-and-file males that Sikhs are becoming too integrated. To them, it is profoundly disturbing that a recent poll of members by City Sikhs, a 6,000-strong organisation representing professional Sikhs in the UK, should show an overwhelming majority in favour of gurdwaras allowing interfaith marriages. To understand this, one must look to the history of Sikhi [the Sikh faith], the youngest of the world’s major religions, founded by Guru Nanak Dev Ji in the late 1400s. He was the first of 10 gurus (teachers) who left behind their collective wisdom in the holy scriptures, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, also known as “The Living Guru”. In 1699, Guru Gobind Singh Ji decided to give Sikhs a visual identity to distinguish them from others. From then on, the Khalsa (baptised) Sikhs were required to carry five articles of faith at all times: uncut hair, a sword, comb, clean clothes and a metal bracelet. A large proportion of Sikhs remain unbaptised, freeing themselves from one or more requirements – they are usually called sahajdari, which could translate as “slow adopters” – but they still practise the religion in other ways. And it is males at the heart of this issue. Many Sikhs see the bid to stop inter-religious marriages as an attempt by men to control Sikh women and stop them from marrying “out”. Since Sikhi was founded, its adherents in India have faced persecution from Mughal emperors, Hindu kings and the British Raj. Thirty years ago, thousands were killed by Indian troops in an anti-separatist attack on its Golden Temple, and in the pogroms that followed the retaliatory assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Among some, this has led to a defensive mentality – exacerbated by worries that the religion is being diluted as new converts come into the fold – and this is what lies behind their radical puritanism. So, while many Sikhs are integrating into British culture, others gravitate towards religion as their main primary identity. Shamsher Singh is one. “We’re dealing with complex issues of identity,” he says. “The intersection of our sense of self with coloniality has created this hybrid, stateless individual that struggles at every juncture with validation and having to constantly justify their beliefs and the practice of their religion to a Westernised audience. I’m living in an age where individuals on the periphery, with tenuous links to the community, are telling those of us who have committed to the Sikh way how we must interpret and practice Sikhi.” Many worry that such attitudes will eventually shrink the community here, not strengthen it. Pippa Virdee, a senior lecturer on South Asian History at De Montfort University, says: “There has generally been a greater assertion of what it is to be Sikh in the last 10 to 15 years. That identity has become exclusive and serves to exclude people who see themselves as Sikhs but may not be practising. Increasingly, I feel we are told – often by men and by so-called leaders of the faith – what is a good Sikh. This will serve only to alienate people.” As I can attest. After I posted videos of wedding disruptions, I was personally threatened and slandered on Sikh websites. People made up lies about me and I was accused of being a “traitor”. And my experience wasn’t rare. Two years ago, Kamalroop Singh, a turban-wearing and fully baptised Sikh, had his car windows smashed after he criticised Sikh fanaticism on a web forum. The incident left his children terrified and his wife ended up having a miscarriage, which the couple attributed to the stress. It wasn’t the first time he had been threatened and such incidents aren’t uncommon, he says. “They [sikh radicals] really are just thugs who use the religion as their justification for intimidation and violence.” And last year Dr Gurnam Singh, principal lecturer at Coventry University, had to stop presenting a show on the Birmingham-based Sikh Channel after signing an online petition to stop “radicalisation of young, British-born Punjabi/Sikh males”. And it is males at the heart of this issue. Many Sikhs see the bid to stop inter-religious marriages as an attempt by men to control Sikh women and stop them from marrying “out”. This sexist mentality surely has its roots in the (60 per cent Sikh) state of Punjab, which has among the lowest ratios of women to men in India due gender-selective abortions, infanticide, neglect of girls, rape and dowry-related murders. In some areas there are just 300 women to 1,000 men. There are laws against gender selection; there is an increasing number of educational campaigns; there are even media “stings “ in which doctors are filmed helping parents to abort female foetuses. Yet the ratio of girls to boys under the age of six has continued to decline. READ MORETwo Sikh men remove their turbans to save four from drowning Wedding between Sikh bride and non-Sikh groom stopped by 'thugs' Sikh man brutally beaten in Birmingham street sparks police probe into Some Sikhs see the sexist attitudes in Britain and ask why there is an obsessive focus on interfaith marriages here when the larger Sikh community faces far more pressing problems. “If they so love Sikhi, why not question the high rate of female foeticide within the Sikh community as a hindrance ... rather than attempting to bar non-Sikhs from the marriage ceremony?” asks writer and journalist Herpreet Kaur Grewal. Meanwhile, this controversy isn’t going to go away soon. The 2011 British Census found that 1.8 per cent of Sikhs (7,600 people) identified as white, while 1.2 per cent (5,000) identified as mixed-race, and it’s likely a large proportion of them do so through marriage to Sikhs, rather than conversion. If those numbers grow, and as some grow more liberal, the differences with more radical Sikhs will grow starker. Jonathan Evans, who calls himself Jonny Singh, emailed me about his experience of moving closer to Sikhism after his marriage to a British Sikh woman. “If my wife and I were forced to abandon our Anand Karaj like couples in the UK are being forced to now, would I have felt the same about the vision of Sikhism as I do now?” he asks. “As humans we are shaped by our experiences. I would never have become a Sikh if I was not married in the gurdwara.” Play 0:00 / 2:31 Fullscreen Mute Share Spate of attacks shake Pakistan's dwindling Sikh community More about: Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara inter-faith marriages Sikh Council UK
  9. A hypothetical scenario You are upset because you just learned that your daughter is engaged to a non-Sikh man. What solutions would you undertake to unsure your daughter's fiance embraces Sikhism.
  10. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh, A lot of modern Sikhs are very quick to extol their opinions that Sikhism equates all the major religions of the world to rivers flowing into a single ocean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism#Sikhism In other words all religions, when properly followed, can lead one to God. Aside from this metaphor being nauseating for its sentimentality, the idea that two faiths with completely different and usually contradictory precepts can both yield the same spiritual pay dirt strikes me as being utterly fanciful. It also betrays an ignorance of the religions with which Sikhi is being equated. Take Muhammad, as an instance of a prophet from another religion. Some members of our Panth consider that both the Prophet of Islam and our own Gurus were all sent by the same God in order to enlighten the masses, that both these parties are composed of the messengers of God. However it is made explicitly clear in the Quran, which was supposedly revealed to Muhammad by Allah himself, that he would be the very last prophet in history to the exclusion of all others that came after him. This includes our own Guru Sahibaan: "Muhammad is... the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets (The Quran, Surah 33:40). As a "seal" closes a letter, so does Muhammad close the line of prophethood. Therefore if we accept Muhammad as a prophet we must by definition accept his revelation (all of which came directly from Allah through the supposed intercession of the Angel Gabriel), and in lending any credence to the idea that he is the last messenger of God, we are in effect denouncing our own Guru Sahibaan as pretenders. We cannot possibly believe in both the Gurus and Muhammad. Either Muhammad was right and our Gurus were liars, or our Gurus are right and Muhammad was a liar. I very much doubt that any of us inclines towards the former. Secondly, how can it be argued that both Islam and Sikhi both lead to salvation when the two of them advocate completely different and antithetical ways of attaining it? In Sikhism, as the members of the Sangat here will well know, one is instructed that rituals such as fasting, pilgrimages, circumcisions are wholly unimportant and of no consequence. One who wishes to attain Mukhta is counselled to avoid these things. But in Islam, fasts, pilgrimages and rituals are of the utmost importance, and are actually said to be necessary if one wishes to go to heaven (two of the so called five pillars of the faith being predicated on ritual). To summarise, is it possible for Muhammad to have been sent by the very same God who sent our own Guru Sahibaan, when the first party's message excludes and contradicts that of the latter?
  11. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vxtbv Listen from 15 mins, theres a girl called harpreet who realised her mistake of marrying out young and now wants to become amritdhari. Atleast some people realise... waheguru
  12. Starting on 1st January, I am going to be running an interfaith project and I need your help! I am going to be observing all religious festivals in 2015 and I need someone to guide me. Is that person you? One of the first holy days is Parkash Guru Gobind Singh, so I definitely need a helping hand! In order to help me you must be: - Sikh - able to explain to a beginner about your holy days and what they mean to you. - based in London or Herts/Berks/Bucks. I will need to be able to travel to meet you - willing to let me tag along with you to any places of worship, rituals or other religious stuff that may be involved in your holy day - mentioned in my blog, either by your name or a pseudonym - willing to come on this journey with me and learn about aspects of your own religion that you may not have known about before There is no pay for this role, but I promise to feed you! If you would like more information, please go to everydayholydays.wordpress.com or contact me on sjqjacobs@gmail.com Thanks! SJ
  13. So apparently there's a Sikh woman who wrote against some of our own members of Sikhsangat about the whole Interfaith wedding issue. Check it out:: http://secretweddingblog.com/why-i-defend-multicultural-marriages-against-people-like-this/
  14. As a GurSikh from America, here I can see more interfaith weddings happening within my own community and all over my own country. I was curious if your sangat in Canada, UK, Austrialia, others are seeing more interfaith marriages occurring in gurdwaras than usually. I really think this is becoming a bigger issue within the panth. I know there are a lot of topics on it, but how do we tackle on the issue of stopping interfaith marriages in gurdwaras. A protest by locking a gurdwara seems a little harsh but does work, but I think gurdwara committees need to step up following the rehit better and we can see a lot less cases happen in the future. I'd like to hear your opinion on this issue. WJKK WJKF
  15. Hello all! I have been quite upset by the prejudices people hold against other religions, so have been trying to write a book which can educate adults and children on the basics of major religions, showing the links between them. However, I am personally not a Sikh, so would be very grateful if you could look over this document and tell me what I should add/subtract/change please? Sorry to trouble you all, but if you do help, it would be most kind :')
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