One First State student recently set out to educate her peers about her faith.
Jasmine Kaur Minhas is a junior at the Tower Hill School, and recently gave a presentation to her classmates about Sikhism – the world’s 5th largest religion.
She showed a video highlighting the history of Sikhs in America – owning the largest peach, pistachio, raisin, and okra farms in California.
It touched on discrimination they’ve faced – like when California passed the Alien Land Act that banned non-US citizens from owning land.
She also showed a video of Nick Cannon wearing a turban. The hip hop artist adopted the traditional Sikh symbol of equality after reading about it.
“I hope that people realize that Sikhs are not someone to be afraid of," Minhas said. "I hope we really dismantled the idea – the direct correlation between Sikhs and terrorists.”
Brian Miller is also junior at Tower Hill – and said the presentation was enlightening for him.
“It was funny how it coincides so much with American beliefs but people so often just reject it and they try to say it’s the complete opposite of American beliefs and they’re kind of just stubborn and closed minded very often," Miller said.
While Minhas said Sikhism is briefly covered in her school’s history classes, she’s working on making the religion part of the state’s history, world religion or social studies curriculums. She’s looking into exactly how to do that now.