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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:26
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I'm just in a social justice mood today!
quote:
One Man's Tense Ride on the LIRR
March 3, 2003
The 7:54 p.m. Huntington train out of Penn Station delivered Gurpreet Singh into the not-so-secret American campaign against people who are Muslim or presumed to be Muslim.
Standing with five or six riders on the Long Island Rail Road some nights ago, Singh noticed a man staring at him. "I felt very uncomfortable," the 24-year-old technology consultant said. "I'm a very friendly and social guy. I walked over and said, 'Hello.' He replied by saying, 'Where you getting off?' I said, 'Syosset.' He said, 'Good.'"
Singh asked, "You happy about that?"
"Yes, I am," said the man, who was wearing a long gray overcoat and sipping from a can of Budweiser in a brown paper bag.
Singh estimated there was maybe a foot or two between them. "I turned toward him just to let him know I'm not afraid," he said.
Ten minutes passed when Singh decided to stroll to the other end of the car. The man followed him. "He shoved me with his chest," Singh said. "He stared down at me."
The man told Singh, "I want you off this train!" Singh walked back to the other end.
"Get off the train!" the man shouted.
Now another man got up and offered Singh the seat next to his. "He won't bother you here," said the stranger.
The man doing the staring now moved closer to Singh. The train was near Carle Place. The stranger confronted the man with the Budweiser.
"Leave him alone," the stranger implored. "He didn't do anything to you."
"I can't believe you're defending these Muslims," said the man with the Bud, his voice rising.
"Don't bother him," the stranger said. "Stay away."
"Don't you know what they did to us?" the man with the Bud said angrily. "How could you defend them?"
"You don't even know that he's a Muslim," the stranger shot back.
Singh is neither Arab nor Muslim. He is a baptized Sikh who was born in Afghanistan and raised in Flushing. He is a graduate of New York University.
"I have a long flowing beard and I wear a turban," he said. "I'm proud of it. Some people see photos of bin Laden on TV and associate that to mean that anybody who wears a turban and a beard is a Muslim and potentially a terrorist."
Since 9/11, a pall of suspicion has been cast over Arabs, Muslims and even people from South Asia, such as Indians and Pakistanis, who often are mistaken for Arabs. There have been assaults and murders. Hundreds of discrimination cases against employers have been filed. While there has been no widespread eruption of hatred or vengeance, American attitudes toward Muslims and people of South Asian descent have become more negative and mistrustful. The principles of liberty and freedom do not apply.
Singh knows this. Several months after 9/11, a man on a train laughed before telling him, "You have guts walking around looking like that."
For a week after the terrorist attacks, Singh stayed home from work. "I was scared for my life," he said. Last year, another stranger on the LIRR offered to fight two men who were harassing him.
Now, on Wednesday night, the train was stopping at Carle Place and the argument was becoming heated.
"I want you off the train," the stranger told the man with the Bud. "I could do whatever I want," the man with the Bud said.
Singh remembered that his heart raced. "I told myself I'm not going to be afraid of this guy," he said. "In my mind ran the history of what the Sikh people have gone through in the past. The Moghuls back in the day said, 'I will give you a price for any Sikh head.' How brave the Sikh were back then. How could I be fearful?"
The stranger tried forcing the other man off the train. There was pushing and shoving. "Here was this man who I don't even know defending my right to be on this train from someone who is clearly a threat," Singh said.
Singh thought about using his kara - a steel bracelet and one of the five articles of the Sikh faith - to defend himself. "The bracelet is a reminder to be good, truthful and righteous," he said. He decided against it.
The struggle between the two men held up the train. The doors could not close.
"Please let go of the doors," said another passenger, joining the fracas. "We all need to get home."
"Look," the passenger assured Singh's protector, "I will make sure he won't be harmed."
An LIRR worker arrived. The man with the Bud was talked into riding in the next car.
Singh could see the man staring him down from afar. At Hicksville, another stranger approached Singh and offered to block the doorway if the aggressor tried to enter. "Another random guy," Singh said.
Then the police arrived. They asked Singh whether he wanted to file a complaint. "I'm going to do it because I'm tired of this," Singh said.
When cops asked for witnesses, three people stepped forward. The harasser received a summons with a date to appear in court.
"That was amazing," Singh said. "New Yorkers, you know, Americans are willing to defend your rights."
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Kudos to the passenger who intervened.
I mainly posted this because one of my colleagues was a witness. She said it was a pretty tense ride!
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:26
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Americans who know the meaning of egalite, liberte, and fraternite.
I was a witness to an instance of racial/religious harassment just before I came to Melbourne, when a neighbour three doors away decided to vent his tiny brained rage on my next door neighbour who happened to be Muslim. My Muslim neighbour had telephoned the police about a car with a broken windshield which had obviously been vandalised and broken into. He noticed this at about 01:30 in the morning, because he drove a London Underground train, and had just come back from work. He left a note on the car for the owner, informing them who he was and that he had called the police.
The following day, a Friday, my neighbour was accosted by Mr. Tiny Brain who accused him of damaging his car. I watched out of the living room window as Tiny Brain verbally abused my neighbour and several other men, then physically assaulted one, went back into his house, came out with a leaf rake, broke it on the body of another man, and was soundly trounced for his troubles.
I call him Tiny Brain, because he had decided that Friday afternoon, just after noon prayers, in an area of London with a large Muslim population, in a street with an Islamic Centre at the bottom of it, and with Muslim men going home, was a good place to insult a Muslim because of his faith.
I was quite happy to call the police and be a witness for the Crown- but my regret was that more of the men coming from the Centre would not be witnesses. They said that they didn't want any trouble, and didn't want to get involved.
Unfortunately, I didn't hear explicit racial slurs from Tiny Brain, just references to 'you people' and 'you lot'; had I done so, it could have added some more time to his sentence. As it was, he went down for 18 months.
Alas my good samaritan neighbour has been forced to move- amongst other minor instances of harassment, some kind soul torched his car. Of course speculation as to the parties involved would be just...speculation.
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The Viceroy
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tu mumbai se, mai Bombay se
Nov 2000
time: 05:26
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My wife is sadarni (A sikh female) and although she wears nothing to identify her as such, just being Indian is enough to make some people conclude she is Muslim, which is so pathetic when you consider 80% of Indians are Hindu.
Thankfully in the UK, things are much better than when I was young, but there are still a small minority of people (old and young, rich and poor) who stair as though she is some alien, come to harm them.
I think there will always be people like this in our world, Ive had the opposite situation happen to me, walking through a pre-dominantly mulslim suburb of Bombay, I got staired at and stopped (not in the usual .. oh look, there's a foreigner way), and my friend was questioned (he's Indian) .. "Is he American ??" .. no harm came of it, as he just said no .. and that was that ..
All we can do as individuals is try to persuade people we know (or come across) that people are just people .. and maybe in time, we can all just be that.
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04-03-2003 07:56
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