I was born in 2001.
So when people talk about 9/11, I don’t have a memory to share. I don’t remember watching the towers fall, the fear that spread across North America or the questions people were asking about who had done it and what would happen next.
But I grew up with the aftermath.
And as a Sikh, that aftermath is something I’ve thought about more as I’ve gotten older. Because four days after 9/11, a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered in Arizona.
Sodhi was outside his gas station, planting flowers, when a man who believed he was connected to the attacks shot him. He wasn’t. He was Sikh. He wore a turban and had a beard.
That was enough.
The story we don’t always tell
And that’s the part of the 9/11 story that has always stayed with me: how quickly someone’s identity can become a target when people don’t understand it.
Sikhs had nothing to do with the attacks. Yet in the days and years that followed, some were treated as though they did. People saw a turban and saw terrorism.
It sounds absurd when you say it now. But people were killed because of it.
In 2012, a white supremacist walked into a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and killed six worshippers. They were praying. They were not terrorists. They weren’t responsible for 9/11. Yet a decade after the attacks, Sikhs were still being targeted because of how they looked.
Then there was Indianapolis.
In April 2021, a gunman opened fire at a FedEx facility and killed eight people. Four of them were Sikh.
Authorities did not determine that the Sikh workers were specifically targeted, and that distinction matters. But the shooting still shook the Sikh community. The Indianapolis facility employed many Sikh workers, and the victims were members of a community connected by faith, language and family.
Once again, Sikh families were planning funerals.
Once again, a community was asking why simply being visibly Sikh could carry so much fear.
Vishavjeet Singh’s story
That question takes me to Vishavjeet Singh.
Singh is an American Sikh artist and activist who has spent years confronting what it means to be visibly Sikh in post-9/11 America.
After the attacks, Singh has spoken about how quickly he and his brother became aware that they could be mistaken for the people Americans were being told to fear. He has described asking his employer if he could work from home because of those concerns.
Think about that for a second.
You are watching the news about a terrorist attack, and instead of only thinking about what happened, you are wondering whether somebody is going to look at you and think you are one of them.
Singh eventually decided he wasn’t going to hide.
He created Sikh Captain America — a turbaned, bearded version of one of America’s most recognizable superheroes. It was more than a costume. It was a statement: a Sikh could look like this and still be unmistakably American.
His story later became American Sikh, a documentary exploring his identity, experiences with discrimination and decision to confront stereotypes rather than shrink himself to fit them.
I love the simplicity of that idea.
Here is a Sikh man taking an image that represents American identity and saying: I belong here too.
And maybe that’s what makes his story so powerful twenty-five years later.
Because the question isn’t really whether Sikhs belong in America.
Or Canada. Or anywhere else. We already do.
The question is why we have spent so much time having to prove it.
A Canadian perspective
I live in the Greater Toronto Area, home to one of the largest Sikh communities outside India. Here, a turban isn’t unusual. You hear Punjabi everywhere. You see Sikhs in government, journalism, medicine, education, business and almost every part of everyday life.
For many of us, that visibility can make it easy to believe the problem has been solved.
But then something happens that reminds you it hasn’t.
Sometimes it’s a hate crime. Sometimes it’s a slur. Sometimes it’s a Sikh person being told to “go back home.” And sometimes it’s something much more subtle — someone looking at you and making assumptions before you’ve even introduced yourself.
That is what makes the legacy of 9/11 so complicated.
I don’t want to pretend every act of anti-Sikh hate today comes directly from September 11. It doesn’t. Racism existed before 9/11. Ignorance existed before 9/11. Anti-immigrant sentiment existed before 9/11.
But 9/11 created a very specific association.
For some people, the turban became connected to terrorism.
And twenty-five years is a long time to carry an association you never created.
Twenty-five years later
Just days before this year’s 25th anniversary, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted an image featuring a fictional “Mr. Singh” alongside a derogatory message about driving. The department later deleted the post following backlash from Sikh and Indian-American organizations.
Maybe the people who created the post didn’t think about what the name meant. Maybe they saw it as a joke.
But that’s exactly the problem.
For Sikhs, Singh isn’t a joke. A turban isn’t a costume.
And our identity isn’t something that should be turned into shorthand for a stereotype.
That’s why, on September 11, I find myself thinking about more than the attacks themselves.
I think about Balbir Singh Sodhi. I think about the six people killed in Oak Creek. I think about the four Sikh workers killed in Indianapolis. I think about Vishavjeet Singh walking around as Sikh Captain America and essentially saying, You don’t get to decide whether I belong here.
And I think about people my age — people who weren’t old enough to remember 9/11, who learned about it through history books, documentaries and our parents.
We didn’t experience that day. But we inherited some of what came after it.
The ending
Maybe that’s why I don’t want this to be a story about fear.
I want it to be a story about how we see each other.
Because if twenty-five years has taught us anything, it is that not knowing someone’s story can be dangerous.
A turban doesn’t tell you someone’s politics. A beard doesn’t tell you someone’s beliefs. A name doesn’t tell you someone’s character. And someone’s skin colour certainly doesn’t tell you whether they are a threat.
I was born around the same time the world changed. I didn’t choose the history I inherited, but I can choose what I do with it.
And maybe that’s what remembering September 11 should mean for my generation: not just remembering what happened that morning, but remembering what happened afterward.
Remembering the people who were mistaken for someone else. Remembering the people who refused to disappear because of it. And, twenty-five years later, choosing to look at the person before deciding what they represent.
So today, remember the lives lost on September 11. But also remember what came after. Ask yourself what assumptions you carry about people you don’t know. And the next time you see someone in a turban, don’t see a stereotype. See a person.