President Obama’s decision to avoid Sikhism’s holiest shrine during his upcoming visit to India because it might make him look Muslim is extremely craven.

“Mr. Obama, a Christian, has struggled to fend off persistent rumors that he is a Muslim, and Sikhs in the United States have often been mistaken for Muslims,” the New York Times reports. Hence, the decision that Obama will not be paying respects at a remarkably beautiful site named the Golden Temple.

No doubt, the notion that Obama secretly follows Islam has been a political liability. A Time magazine August poll found that one-fourth of Americans think him to be Muslim. Since almost one-third of the American people deem Muslims unfit to be the President of the United States, misinformation about Obama’s faith has contributed to suspicions about him. Many of his opponents have seized on this—and added it on to his Kenyan origins and to the canard that he was not born in the United States—to portray him as un-American. So, even a seemingly innocuous comment by NASA administrator Charles Bolden to the Al Jazeera network about reaching out to the Muslim world came under heavy fire by many conservatives, with some suggesting that it was part of an Obama Administration conspiracy to Islamize the United States. 5

Still, Obama’s decision is wrong on several levels.

Sikhism is a religion distinct from Islam, though it shares elements with it, such as its strictly monotheistic nature. A short primer: Sikhism was founded in the fifteenth century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. Observant Sikhs follow certain tenets, such as not cutting off their hair, with Sikh males wearing turbans. This has led to an inability among some Americans to differentiate between Sikhs and Muslims, and sparked hate crimes against Sikhs in this country during the Iran hostage crisis and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Visitors to Sikh temples have to drape a piece of cloth over their heads. It is this that apparently has the Obama team freaking out, with television visuals of Obama with a covered head encircled by bearded, turbaned men being the stuff of their nightmares.

But even if Obama was at a Muslim shrine and surrounded by bearded, turbaned Muslims, so what? Obama not visiting the Golden Temple is just a continuation of a pattern that started when he was a candidate, when he spurned the offer of Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, to campaign at mosques for him, and never made the simple statement that there was nothing wrong with being a Muslim. By engaging in this behavior, he is feeding into the worst stereotypes about Islam.

“No serious journalist would ask a random black guy with a briefcase on the street to explain the pathology of an African American criminal because of the coincidence of shared skin color,” Ellison, who is African American, recently wrote in the Washington Post. “But serious journalists call on ordinary Muslim Americans to explain the behavior of homicidal maniacs and extremists, thereby making the link between the crazies and the mainstream community.”

Obama, of all people, should realize the hurtfulness of labels, and do his best to counter, rather than reinforce, them.

If you liked this article by Amitabh Pal, the managing editor of The Progressive magazine, please check out his article entitled "Chilean Mining Rescue Masks Underlying Problems."

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