Sikhism suits the needs of modern life since it is open to everyone who is willing to embrace its practices and doctrines. Sikhism, one of the most scientific and modern religions in the world, is the fifth largest religion. One distinctive characteristic of the Sikh religious practice in comparison to other faiths is the vibrant Sikh identity, which is culturally, spiritually, and visually, able to be noticeable within the crowd. Sikhism has become principally and identifiably a way of appearance, which is the decisive threshold between being a “Sikh” or not, between being someone and being anyone. A Sikh’s identity is known as the “Khalsa”, which means the “community of the pure” (Takhar, 2005). The Khalsa is an example of a transnational religious community, which its sole purpose was to institute a military charge of “saint soldiers.” The Khalsa refers to the baptized Sikhs, who have taken “amrit paul” (Nesbitt, 2002). The Khalsa was responsible for both protection and administration of the community. According to Sikhism, a Sikh should be a scholar, saint, and soldier for God, who must live by an example as the Guru Granth Sahib outlines. Sikhs have their own real identity, which is vividly growing substantially since it possesses its separate religion, institutions, martial traditions, history, and territory. The Khalsa Sikhs could be recognized by the given five articles of Sikhism, the Five Ks (McLeod, 2008). However, how is it possible that a turbaned and bearded portrait of a Sikh comes to embody a religion whose antipathy to the worship of a sacred idol image is the character of its difference from Hinduism? This research paper, argues that the theoretical accounts of the role of the outer appearance relative to the rel...
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7. McLeod, W. H. (2000). Exploring Sikhism: Aspects of Sikh identity, culture and thought. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
8. McLeod, W. H. (2003). Sikhs of the Khalsa: A history of the Khalsa rahit. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
9. McLeod, W. H. (2004). Sikhs and Sikhism. Oxford India paperbacks. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
10. McLeod, H. (2008). The Five Ks of the Khalsa Sikhs. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128.2 : 325-331.
11. Nesbitt, E. (2002). The body in Sikh religion. In S. Coakley (Eds.), Religion and the Body (pp. 289-305). UK: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
12. Takhar, O. K. (2005). Sikh identity: An exploration of groups among Sikhs. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
13. Uberoi, J.P.S. (1991). Five Symbols of Sikh Identity. In T.N. Madan (Eds.), Religion in India (pp. 320 - 333). Delhi: Oxford University Press.
"Sikh Awareness." Sikh Awareness. © 2002-2012 THE SIKH COALITION, 12 Oct. 2001. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
...o de-essentialize and de-Orientalize religious system of Islam, and instead locate it as part of a historical discursive tradition where practices were contested and in flux. This challenges notions of what authentic religious practices are in Theravada Buddhism, and in doing so expands an understanding of what forms can take. For this reason, the work is useful, and highly recommended for an aspiring religious or anthropological scholar.
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead.
Despite being one of the world's largest world religions, Sikhism remains one of the most unknowledgeable and misunderstood traditions in America now. It is overseen and viewed in a lens based off assumptions of events that have occurred over the years. The lack of understanding has brought up too many serious consequences for their community including discriminatory policies, prejudiced stereotypes, shocking school bullying and violent hate crimes. To begin, Sikhism is a religion originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent about the end of the 15th century. It is known as one of the youngest of the major world religions! The vital beliefs of
Fisher, Mary Pat. "Chapter 5: Buddhsim." Living Religions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2005. 150-62. Print.
Sikhism is the youngest religion out of all the major world religions, it is actually only about five hundered years old. Sikhism like most religions was “born out of an shaped by exisiting faiths, and like offspirng bears a likeness to them.” (Singh 2004 p-16). Sikhism was created out of two reigions those being Islam and Hinduism. The time that when Sikhism was created was a time when India was being torn apart by different religious factions.The founder of Sikhism was Guru Nanak Dev Ji and he was born in 1469. According to Singh (2004) Guru Nanak spread the message of “Ek Omkar” which basically means that we are all one, created by the One Creater of all Creation. Guru Nanak did not aligne himself with a religion he actually respected all religions but he did express the reality that there is only one God and that the Name of God is Truth. Basically Singh (2004) tells us that the followers of Guru Nanak were Sikhs which literealy means student or disciple. Sikhs have many beliefs but their main belief stated by Robinson (2009) is that Sikhs believe in one God that has many names and has no s...
Sikhism is a monotheistic organized religion founded in the 15th century in the Punjab region of India by Guru Nanak the first of 10 Gurus. Sikhism’s philosophy has evolved through the added teachings of each Guru over time. Each Guru would appoint a successor and this process continued until the 10th Guru, Goband Singh, declared he would be the last Guru of Sikh ism and the teachings of each Guru was recorded by the sixth Guru in scripture titled the Guru Granth Sahib. This is the central religious text of Sikhism and is considered by many Sikhs to be the final sovereign guru of the religion. The main teaching of Sikhism is the idea of the oneness of God. Sikhs believe that the spiritual and secular worlds are intertwined rather than separate. Sikhism teaches its followers that all religious traditions can help to enli...
Asani, Ali. “In Praise of Muhammad: Sindhi and Urdu Poems.” Religions of India in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
In Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s book The Faith of Other Men he starts by describing his challenge as a teacher in Lahore. He mentions that his colleagues were, like the great majority of the students, a mix of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhns. As a Christian he and the rest of the community had to work toward the construction and maintenance of a religiously diverse community. The missionary college emphasized the message that faith was a serious and fundamental matter, that could neither be taken for granted nor dismissed. That message for Smith’s can be echoed in the oversimplified religious society of today. The religious life of humanity according to Smith is one that religiously plural, and this is true for all of us. Muslims, Hindus, Confucians, and Buddhists there no longer these far away peoples but rather they have become our neigh...
Sikhs must not drink alcohol, smoke or gamble. They have one wife or husband. They must pray every morning. They must read the holy book everyday. The Ten Gurus (teachers) of the Sikh told the people what God wanted; how they should live their lives; and how peace and tranquility could be obtained. Sikhs must wear the 5Ks – Uncut Hair Kesh, Small Comb Kanga, Bangle Kara, Special Shorts Kacha and Sword Kirpan.
First, ethnic fusion defines ethnicity as the major religious foundation. Success of such religions is attributed to the preservation of fundamentals that may be “at odds with the dominant culture (Christiano et al., 2016).” Second, ethnic religion links language and national identity to an ethnicity (Christiano et al., 2016). Third, religious ethnicity is defined as more than one group sharing the same religion (Christiano et al., 2016). Lastly, ethnic autonomy is defined as playing a minimal role in defining ethnic identity (Christiano et al., 2016). Ethnic autonomy is viewed as a less frequent identity, such as gypsies. Further elaborated in the text is the influence of religious institutions on the implementation of culture in the new
In Sikhism, it is debatable whether religious texts portray women well, or if they portray women often enough in general. What is undisputed, however, is that women continue to hold a lower status in the Sikh tradition. Often, women are ignored in the Sikh religion. Doris Jakobsh states that, “While Sikh apologetics repeatedly insist that women and men are inherently equal in the Sikh world view, in reality, historical writings contain virtually nothing about women, apart from minimal asides referring to the occasional exceptional woman who has been deemed worthy enough to have made the pages of history” (Relocating, 7). This shows that there is a discrepancy between the equality that Sikhs seem to believe that women have in their religion and the restrictions placed on women anyway. While learning about Sikhism, I found it curious that there was a serious lack of female influence acknowledged in the conception of the religion. Considering the fact that there were many women present, upon visiting a Sikh Mandir, it seemed that many members of the female population in Sikhism are unaccounted for. M.K. Gill notes that though Mata Sundri [one of Guru Gobind Sing’s wives] led the panth longer than any of the nine Gurus subsequent to Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition, and through one of its more difficult and d...
For the purposes of this study I have defined cultural identity as the feeling of self-definition an individual has which is formed through a sense of belonging to a certain group. In this presentation I will be looking specifically at the effects of religion to this sense of cultural identity.
Most people in the world derive their religious beliefs and traditions from their parents and peer influences. From a religious point of view, “There are many definitions for the term ‘religion’ in common usage. [Broadly defined], in order to include the greatest number of belief systems: ‘Religion is any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life’” (Robinson, 1996). However, in examining Hinduism, it is difficult to label the practices as a religion. This paper will expound upon the Hindu traditions, taking into account the characteristics of sacred elements, their meaning, and significance.