Sikhism is the youngest of the world religions. It was founded by Nanak in the sixteenth century and has approximately 6,000,000 adherents located chiefly in the Punjab region of India. In a sense Sikhism may be regarded as yet another reform movement in Hinduism. Nanak attempted to integrate the best in Hinduism and Islam into a new inclusive religion. Nanak stands in a tradition of reformers. An older contemporary, Kabir, is especially noted for his attempt to bring Hinduism and Islam together.
The idea of one God and men and women being equal is very tempting.
The Sikhs seem to be a lot more tolerant than Moslems, even though they carry wee daggers with them. Maybe that's why they have assimilated into Glaswegian culture so well. We are the friendliest city on earth, and we all carry blades in case you don't agree.
personally i have no idea. however, these guys became part of the British empire, and under Mountbatten they formed one of the fiercest and most loyal bunch OD soldiers the British army has ever seen.
they are warriors. men of hon our and compassion on the battlefield... they believe in family, and friendships, and woe betide you if you face them on the battlefield, or in the dark as you break into their shops.
on a religious note. holism is mulit-thesic. it has many gods, more in fact than the many arms of vishnu has fingers.
Sikhism one of the youngest religions in the world. Sikhs are simple people who have nothing but tolerated discrimination, hatred and war throughout history.
Begining of Sikhism, they have been defending pressure from Islam emperors who forced Hindus do convert to Islam, the Hindu pundits came to the Sikhs gurus for help. They have been defending the Hindus for centuries and what did they get in return, nil, nothing at all. The Sikhs were burned, slaughtered just bxs a Sikh shot Indra Gandhi. Y is that? bxs Indra Gandhi ordered to destroy the Golden temple, the holiest site of Sikh people.
Personally i reckon Sikhism is the best and simplest religion on Earth. They respect all religions, they never insulted nor ignored any religion.
Goodluck mate
Let me Clarify one thing.
Sikhs believe in one god and one god only and only god.
They bow down to God alone through their holy book they bow to nothing else, no stone gods, no gods with many arms.
They Bow to no Man Woman or Animal
And those People who call themselves Sikhs But worship a a man who thinks of himself as a living guru are NOT SIKHS
There is only one god,The one true God.
Over twenty million Sikhs follow a revealed, distinct, and unique religion born five centuries ago in the Punjab region of northern India. Between 1469 and 1708, ten Gurus preached a simple message of truth, devotion to God, and universal equality. Often mistaken as a combination of Hinduism and Islam, the Sikh religion can be characterized as a completely independent faith:
Sikhism rejects idolatry, the caste system, ritualism, and asceticism. It recognizes the equality between both genders and all religions, prohibits the intake of any intoxicants, and encourages an honest, truthful living. Sikhs have their own holy scripture, Guru Granth Sahib. Written, composed, and compiled by the Sikh Gurus themselves, the Guru Granth Sahib serves as the ultimate source of spiritual guidance for Sikhs. While the Sikhs hold their Gurus in high reverence, they are not to be worshiped; Sikhs may only worship God.
I like their golden temple and the fact that they are a very peaceful religion. I also consider it wise that the Sikh holy book is thought of as a teacher rather than the perfect word of God.
Another thing I like about Sikhs is the nice clothes and the turbans - hats and head wear of any kind are cool.
I also think Sikh men have very tidy looking beards - well groomed despite being long.
Someone above said "They have been defending the Hindus for centuries and what did they get in return, nil, nothing at all. The Sikhs were burned, slaughtered just bxs a Sikh shot Indira Gandhi. Y is that? bxs Indra Gandhi ordered to destroy the Golden temple, the holiest site of Sikh people."
You conveniently ignored the fact that Golden temple was being used as fort by the TERRORISTS.
Before that for a few years Hindus were regularly being killed and forced to leave Punjab by those terrorists .
Indira Gandhi did not set out war ageist them out of blue. She was not crazy. Temple was not destroyed by Indira but the terrorists.
Riots in aftermath were wrong and were not that wide spread. It was more political , and limited to Delhi and nearby areas.
Why Sikh never mention about those killed by Sikh terrorists when they complain about riots after Gandhi's murder?
He asked , what they got in return for defending Hinduism?
They got respect and followers from Hindus.
Hindus used to donate at least one son to the Sikh Pantha just like Christian families used to send at least one child to Churches.
Some separatist Sikhs may deny this but Sikh Gurus call themselves Hindu only and a large number of them still does it.
I understand that Sikh are proud of their heritage . But I am rather at loss that they think they need the to belittle the recognition and respect they get from Hindus to feel better about them selves. I thought its more of a Christian/ Islamic thing to blame others and not to take any responsibility if unwanted things like riots hap penned.
Hindu do not go constantly blaming all Sikhs for those killed by Khalistani terrorists in eighties.
No, dint become Sikh...
Atleast dint leave Islam for Sikhism...
How can this religion be true, when it has developed only in some part of India...
I have no idea, and dint know much about the religion... just have seen the people who have long hairs, and as I dint know the reason, i think they are stupid....
If you have chosen it, you should know a lot about it, can you give me some info too? => wayiran@yahoo.com
Well many people would say that all religions lead to a common goal. Well I agree and disagree.
I found this interesting letter from an atheist society member who was trying to find ways for proving that we don't need any religion be it Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or the Sikh religion. It seems that the Sikh faith seems to have become a hurdle. Read on..
From: "Atheist Society" To: afreethinker@hotmail.com Subject: Dear Ali we have a problem, please help! Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 20:40:30 +0000
Dear Ali, please help us. We were very impressed with your website and agreed that religion in general is no longer needed, we can all be humanistic and live in peace and harmony. We are in the process of making a website which will hopefully help to destroy the religious doctrines which divide humanity. We were doing great with knocking out Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Baha'i, even Buddhism but we have gotten very stuck with Sikhism. This religion is (to put it nicely) "a big pain in the *** " (Please pardon the language) We have only found one site which tries (very poorly) to argue that even this religion is not needed, but the argument is irrational and very unscientific unlike the very rational arguments you use. When we read the following from your website, we found what you said to be amazingly interesting:
"Doubt Everything Find Your Own Light."
"Last Words
Dear friend, if you look for meaning in life, don?t look for it in religions; don?t go from one cult to another or from one guru to the next. You can expend all your life or look for eternity and will find nothing but disappointment and disillusionment. Look instead in service to humanity. You will find ?meaning? in your love for other human beings. You can experience God when you help someone who needs your help. The only truth that counts is the love that we have for each other. This is absolute and real. The rest is mirage, fancies of human imagination and fallacies of our own making." By Ali Sina
Why is this interesting? Because we found this religion of Sikhism to be in agreement with you! This is why we have a problem. We tried to look at their holy text (Adi Granth) but didn't find the usual absurdities we found in the other religious books. In fact its refreshingly inspiring and very good!? Maybe you can have some better luck. We tried to visit a couple of websites and got more of a shock. Did you know that they believed in Democracy, freedom of speech, choice, statement, freedom of religion, pluralism, human rights, equality between men and women, equality of all people regardless of race, religion, caste, creed, status etc. 300 years before the existence of the USA! Theirs is the only religion which says in their religious scriptures that women are equal in every respect to men. They even had women soldiers leading armies in to battle against "you know who" (The usual suspects - Muslims!) Their history is a proud one, they fought in both World Wars. Even Hitler praised them for their bravery and Aryan heritage!
Dear Ali, this religion is hard for us to try and criticize but you are an expert and may find some faults overlooked by us. In their holy book, there is a round earth, water is made from chemical elements, there is even mention of the evolution process, big bang and life on other planets! This is pretty crazy and amazing stuff, who would have thought that these New York taxi drivers (There are lots of Sikh taxi drivers in NY) would have such an am zing faith? We read up some information of what Bertrand Russell had to say about Sikhism, this is the man who destroyed Christianity (same applies to Islam and Judaism) and exposed its absurdities, but even this great man got stuck when it came to Sikhism! In fact he gave up and said
"that if some lucky men survive the onslaught of the third world war of atomic and hydrogen bombs, then the Sikh religion will be the only means of guiding them.
Russell was asked that he was talking about the third world war, but isn't this religion capable of guiding mankind before the third world war?
In reply, Russell said, "Yes, it has the capability, but the Sikhs have not brought out in the broad daylight, the splendid doctrines of this religion which has come into existence for the benefit of the entire mankind. This is their greatest sin and the Sikhs cannot be freed of it."
Please bear in mind that Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher and free thinker. We have been trying for weeks now to find a way to fairly and rationally criticize and find fault with this religion but have failed. We even found out that there are many people converting to this religion in the USA and Europe as well as Russia (Mostly well educated and affluent white people). We tried to find some of their literature and see what kind of claims they make, but unfortunately they have no missionary material as they do not have missionaries! People become Sikh by learning usually by chance or by coming in to contact with them. They are currently the 5Th biggest religion in the world and growing quite fast in the west and Russia.
Please help us as we are stuck, to give you an example of they are all about we found the following websites:
http://www.sikhnet.com (This is a pretty good site and helpful)
http://www.hope.at/sikhism (This site is very easy to follow, check it out, they have a Womans section and a Martyrs section, it looks like that you are not the only one trying to expose the falseness of Islam, Sikhs scholars did it hundreds of years ago and got killed for it!)
http://www.sikhs.org (This is the site that was on CNN when Sikhs in the USA were mistaken for Arabs and Middle Easterners and were attacked by mindless morons)
Please help us out, we cant make our website about religion being the cause of war and disharmony when we have this one and only religion which makes a hell of a lot of sense! lol (I thought Atheism had all the answers but were kind of stuck now.)
We look forward to hearing from you, we respect your great views and want to promote them to everyone, thank you for your time, take care.
How Great is Sikhism and the Sikhs?
