Valley residents come together with Sikh community

Catholic priests lent their condolences.

A few from the Buddhist faith stepped up and offered words of encouragement.

A rabbi noted that there is no place for hatred in this region or in this country.

In the end, religious leaders from the Las Vegas Valley all agreed Wednesday night that love will endure - and that people from different faiths, despite their varied beliefs, ultimately have more in common than not.

That was the optimistic message, delivered in complete harmony, at the Las Vegas Sikh Temple in northwest Las Vegas, where a candlelight vigil was held.

Hundreds of people, some of them claiming no denominations, came to support the temple, whose 1,000-plus members are feeling downtrodden and misunderstood in the wake of a recent shooting that left six of their own dead in a Milwaukee suburb on Sunday.

The gunman, white supremacist Wade Michael Page, 40, turned the gun on himself in the final seconds, killing himself and any sort of chance of understanding his motives.

"I am so sick of Americans who just don't understand the differences in cultures and religions, and who never make any kind of attempt to try," said Kathy Raja, 64, a Methodist by upbringing.

Her fragile neck is much better these days thanks to the expertise of her surgeon, a Sikh who belongs to the temple on West Lone Mountain Road near Torrey Pines Drive.

The least she could do, Raja said, was show up and lend her surgeon some support.

"People just have no idea how friendly the Sikhs are," she added, "how genuine they are, how helpful they are, and it's something that should be known."

And yet as uplifting as the prayer service was, there was that heavy reminder of its origins: Seven Las Vegas police officers, dressed in a different sort of garb, watched over the entire affair, making sure that everything went off without a hitch.

Their presence might have been just a common-sense precaution after what transpired in Wisconsin, but one thing is certain: The valley's religious communities are behind the Sikhs 100 percent.

Members often have been mistaken for potential terrorists because of their religious head wear and appearance.

The men wear turbans and do not shave their beards. It's just one of their religious customs once they are baptized. It's what the crucifix is to Christianity or the yarmulke, or skullcap, is to Judaism.

And yet in a post-9/11 era, there are many people who still are having difficulty distinguishing between the Sikhs and fundamentalist Islamic factions such as the Taliban.

"It's getting to the point where some of us are shaving our beards because we're afraid," noted Amar Chadha, 37, a devout Sikh. "It's sad because we're losing a part of our religious heritage. We're losing a part of our tradition."

But Rajwinder Dhaliwal, the temple's president, says the Sikh community will persevere.

Since the 1980s, the Sikh community has been a visible part of the Las Vegas Valley landscape. They work in banks, they own convenience stores and gas stations. They work in the casinos.

Nearly half of the Sikh population is self-employed.

Most of them came from the Indian state of Punjab, where the Sikh religion was founded in the 15th century in what was then Pakistan.

It's the fifth-largest organized religion in the world, numbering 27 million, with nearly 800,000 worshippers in the United States. About 2,000 people attend the valley's Sikh temples.

The religion preaches one God. It accepts everyone into the folds of its temple, regardless of faith. Among its key tenets are serving the community, feeding the homeless and helping those who need help.

But many people do not understand that, Sikh leaders admonish. Some only see the long beards and unusual headgear. Hopefully, that will change in the aftermath of the Wisconsin tragedy.

A similar service will be tonight at 6:30 at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, 4487 E. Russell Road.

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.