Mourners Gather To Honor Sikh Temple Victims

Mourners grieve at the funeral and memorial service for the six victims of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin mass shooting in Oak Creek, Wis. (AP)

Thousands of mourners gathered this morning to pay their final respects to the six worshipers gunned down by a white supremacist at their Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc.

The service will include prayers and hymns and Attorney General Eric Holder will speak.

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Afterward mourners will begin a traditional rite called “akhand path,” a ceremony that involves a series of priests reading their holy book aloud from cover to cover. The process, which takes 48 hours, is intended to honor the memories of the six victims.

Forty-year-old Wade Michael Page opened fire at the Sikh Temple on Sunday, killing one woman and five men, including the temple president.

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Simran Jeet Singh, a Sikh scholar and doctoral student of religion at Columbia University, said he is encouraged by the outpouring of support for the Sikh community brought on by the tragedy.

While he, like other Sikhs, has long experienced intolerance, he writes in the Huffington Post that he is “rejecting the notion that we need to live in fear.”

He also wrote that greater cultural understanding could emerge from the shooting tragedy:

Although it will be important to understand what motivated the violence, this should not color the inspiration behind our own reactions. We should draw from our American and Sikh traditions by continuing to respond with love and compassion. Let us stand up together and turn the tragedy in Wisconsin into a turning point for our nation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Guest:

Simran Jeet Singh, Sikh scholar and social activist

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Smithsu

I enjoyed listening to the story about the Sikh temple attack and the interview with the Sikh scholar. However, I was very dismayed with the interviewer. She continued to pronounce Sikh as “seek” in the face of the scholar pronouncing it as “sick”. Perhaps the interviewer was not aware of the impression she was creating, but she sounded insensitive and arrogant. How could she continue to use an alternate pronunciation in response to this scholar. This is being culturally tone deaf.
- Barfootjim
  
  I would be tolerant of “seek” instead of “sick” because, to an English-speaking audience (almost all who would listen to such a broadcast) the connotation is better.
  - barefootjames
    
    I too would be more tolerant of a “Kindu” instead of “Hindu”, to an English-speaking audience, the connotation of one’s Hind-quarters is disturbing. Also “Dewish” is much better than “Jewish” because it reminds me of morning and the dew on the grass when I was a kid. Its not like we should respect how things are pronounced, we should just change everything to what we want it to be out a respect. Its not like those languages are hundreds if not thousands of years older than english and predate it by alot.