The Letter to the Ephesians couldn’t be clearer than in this Sunday’s reading: “All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.” Humanity has yet to heed those words, as was evident once again on Sunday when disaffected white supremacist Wade Michael Page opened fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding three others. A broad spectrum of U.S. religious groups—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim—condemned the killings, which authorities described as an act of "domestic terrorism."

Sikhs across the country mourned the deaths in the shooting rampage outside Milwaukee, and some said the killings revived bitter memories of the period just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when their distinctive turbans and beards seemed to trigger harassment and violence by people who wrongly assumed that they were militant Muslims.

Sikhism, a monotheistic faith that emerged from the Punjab region of India about 500 years ago, is one of the world’s youngest major religions. It emphasizes self-reliance and individual responsibility and draws its tenets from the words of 10 gurus. The religion is known for promoting women to positions of power and has championed social justice.

To some who track the movements of white-supremacist groups, the violence was not a total surprise. Page, 40, who died in a shootout with police outside the temple after the massacre, had long been among the hundreds of names on the radar of organizations monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of his ties to the white supremacist movement and his role as the leader of a white-power band called End Apathy. “The music that comes from these bands is incredibly violent, and it talks about murdering Jews, black people, gay people, and a whole host of other enemies,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the law center.

At least one commentator found a silver lining amidst the tragedy. Faheem Younus, Ph.D., an adjunct faculty member for religion and history at the community colleges of Baltimore County, said the tragedy posed a question to the core American values: Do we stand up for the safety of our religious minorities with the same vigor as we do for the mainstream population?

“The question was valiantly answered by the heroic act of the two police officers who did not hesitate to risk their own lives in order to save the lives of others,” wrote Younus. “They stood up to protect a Sikh congregation with the same vigor as was displayed for the victims of previous mass shootings.”

Sources: Articles by Ethan Bronner, Erica Goode, and Serge F. Kovaleski for the New York Times, a news
item by Ecumenical News International, and an opinion piece by Faheem Younus for the Baltimore Sun