During the Middle Ages, Muslims were in conflict with Zoroastrians during the Islamic conquest of Persia ; Christians were in conflict with Muslims during the Byzantine-Arab Wars, Crusades, Reconquista and Ottoman wars in Europe ; Christians were in conflict with Muslims during the Crusades, Reconquista and Inquisition ; Shamans were in conflict with Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Christians during the Mongol invasions ; and Muslims were in conflict with Hindus and Sikhs during Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent.

Following her cremation, millions of Sikhs were displaced and nearly three thousand were killed in anti-Sikh riots.

Of these 2, 154, 695 were Muslims ( 74. 16 %), 689, 073 Hindus ( 23. 72 %), 25, 828 Sikhs, and 35, 047 Buddhists.

Of these, 2, 398, 320 ( 75. 94 %) were Muslims, 696, 830 ( 22. 06 %) Hindus, 31, 658 ( 1 %) Sikhs, and 36, 512 ( 1. 16 %) Buddhists.

In border areas some 10 — 12 million people moved from one side to another and upwards of a half million were killed in communal riots pitting Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

The body of the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers were left in place of his dead body.

This status was originally only made available to non-Muslims who were " People of the Book " ( Christians, Jews, and Sabians ), but was later extended to include Zoroastrians, Sikhs, Hindus, Mandeans ( Sabians ), and Buddhists.

The Guru Granth Sahib also says that Bhagat Namdev and Bhagat Kabir, who were both believed to be Hindus, both attained salvation though they were born before Sikhism took root and were clearly not Sikhs. This highlights and reinforces the Guru's saying that " peoples of other faiths " can join with God as true and also at the same time signify that Sikhism is not the exclusive path for liberation.

In 1628, immediately after becoming Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan's forces were ambushed by Sikh rebels, the Emperor organized an assault, which caused almost all the Sikhs, including Guru Hargobind and his mercenaries to flee.

For more than 300 years the Sikhs were persecuted endlessly.

The months leading up to the partition of India in 1947 were marked by heavy conflict in the Punjab between Sikhs and Muslims.

They were also taken into the battle sometimes ; the Sikhs would raise the Nishan Sahib high, and the opposing forces would know the Singhs were coming.

Some of the Sikhs who had settled in eastern Africa were expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972.

In Malaysia, two Sikhs were elected as MPs during the 2008 general elections ; Karpal Singh ( Bukit Gelugor ) and his son Gobind Singh Deo ( Puchong ).

Two Sikhs were elected as assemblymen: Jagdeep Singh Deo ( Datuk Keramat ) and Keshvinder Singh ( Malim Nawar ).

The BJP never supported Operation Bluestar, the BJP strongly protested the violence against Sikhs in Delhi that broke out in 1984, following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by one of her Sikh bodyguards.

The Sikhs and Pathans of the Punjab and North-West Frontier Province supported the British and helped in the recapture of Delhi.

The Mashwanis played an active role against the Sikhs during their occupation of the Hazara region during the 19th century and later supported the British colonial rule very actively from the time of Major James Abbott onwards.

Soon things turned extreme with India alleging that neighbouring Pakistan supported these militants, who, by 1983-84, had begun to enjoy widespread support among Sikhs.

They, supported by the Hindu newspapers from Jalandhar, exhorted Punjabi Hindus to declare Hindi as their “ mother tongue ” instead of Punjabi in the censuses that took place, so that the Sikhs could be deprived of the argument that they were only asking for a Punjabi-speaking Suba.

All Sikhs, on taking Amrit, are enjoined to lead a disciplined life by following a code of ethics leading to a " Saint-Soldier " way of life.

# Ardas – Sikhs conclude their prayers by doing the Ardas and invoking God's blessings on everyone – not just on Sikhs.

In 1834 Dost Mohammad defeated an invasion by the former ruler, Shuja Shah Durrani, but his absence from Kabul gave the Sikhs the opportunity to expand westward.

The Afghan leader did not follow up this triumph by retaking Peshawar, however, but instead contacted Lord Auckland, the new British governor general in British India, for help in dealing with the Sikhs.

In 1838 Auckland, Ranjit Singh, and Shuja signed an agreement stating that Shuja would regain control of Kabul and Kandahar with the help of the British and Sikhs ; he would accept Sikh rule of the former Afghan provinces already controlled by Ranjit Singh, and that Herat would remain independent.

* 1984 – Operation Blue Star, a military offensive, is launched by the Indian government at Harmandir Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for the Sikhs, in Amritsar.

He suffered imprisonment in Nabha, a princely state, when he went there to see the struggle that was being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants.

Jahangir's rule was characterized by the same religious tolerance as his father Akbar, with the exception of his hostility with the Sikhs, which was forged so early on in his rule.

However, the Sikh governors turned out to be hard taskmasters, and Sikh rule was generally considered oppressive, protected perhaps by the remoteness of Kashmir from the capital of the Sikh empire in Lahore ; The Sikhs enacted a number of anti-Muslim laws, which included handing out death sentences for cow slaughter, closing down the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, and banning the azaan, the public Muslim call to prayer.

Earlier, in 1780, after the death of Ranjit Deo, the Raja of Jammu, the kingdom of Jammu ( to the south of the Kashmir valley ) was also captured by the Sikhs and afterwards, until 1846, became a tributary to the Sikh power.

Drafted by a treaty and a bill of sale, and constituted between 1820 and 1858, the Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu ( as it was first called ) combined disparate regions, religions, and ethnicities: to the east, Ladakh was ethnically and culturally Tibetan and its inhabitants practised Buddhism ; to the south, Jammu had a mixed population of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs ; in the heavily populated central Kashmir valley, the population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, however, there was also a small but influential Hindu minority, the Kashmiri brahmins or pandits ; to the northeast, sparsely populated Baltistan had a population ethnically related to Ladakh, but which practised Shi ' a Islam ; to the north, also sparsely populated, Gilgit Agency, was an area of diverse, mostly Shi ' a groups ; and, to the west, Punch was Muslim, but of different ethnicity than the Kashmir valley.

According to Burton Stein's History of India, " Kashmir was neither as large nor as old an independent state as Hyderabad ; it had been created rather off-handedly by the British after the first defeat of the Sikhs in 1846, as a reward to a former official who had sided with the British.

For example, gatka is a weapon-based Indian martial art created by the Sikhs of the Punjab region of India and the Kshatriya caste of Hindus have another ancient martial art named Shastra vidhya.

The Talwar is a type of curved sword that was introduced to India in the 13th century by invading Muslim conquerors and was adopted by communities who favoured the sword as their main weapon, including the Rajputs, Marathas and Sikhs.

However, the firangi was widely used by the Mughals and those peoples who came under their rule, including Sikhs and Rajputs.

Sikhs who have undergone the khanḍe-kī-pahul, the Sikh initiation ceremony, can also be recognized by the Five Ks: uncut hair ( Kesh ); an iron / steel bracelet ( kara ); a Kirpan, a sword tucked in a gatra strap ; Kachehra, a type of special shorts ; and a Kanga, a small comb to keep the hair clean.

People revered by Sikhs also include:

An example of Sikhism's commitment to tolerance is the fact that the foundation stone of one of the most prominent shrines of the Sikhs — Darbar Sahib, Amritsar also known as the Golden Temple — was laid, not by the many eminent Sikh leaders or the 4th Sikh Guru Ramdas, who was the leader of the Sikhs at that time, but by a Sufi Muslim by the name of Sain Mian Mir.

The Mughal Empire suffered a gradual decline in the early 18th century, which provided opportunities for the Afghans, Balochis, Sikhs, and Marathas to exercise control over large areas in the northwest of the subcontinent until the British East India Company gained ascendancy over South Asia.

The effect was the religious migration of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab, mirroring a similar religious migration of Punjabi Muslims in East Punjab.

Sikhs have emigrated to countries all over the world – especially to English-speaking and East Asian nations.

About 11. 2 million or 78 % of the population transfer took place in the west, with Punjab accounting for most of it ; 5. 3 million Muslims moved from India to West Punjab in Pakistan, potentially 3. 8 million Hindus and Sikhs could have moved from West Pakistan to East Punjab in India but 500, 000 had already migrated before the Radcliffe award was announced ; elsewhere in the west 1. 2 million moved in each direction to and from Sind.

* East Valley Tribune, " Sikhs still living in shadow of Sept. 11 ", Sept. 16, 2005

Tensions between native workers and Sikhs brought in from British East India to work on the project ( coolies ) threaten to stop the project.

Following the independence of Pakistan and the subsequent partition of British India, a process of population exchange took place in 1947 as Muslims left East Punjab and headed to the newly created Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs left West Punjab for the newly created state of India.

Historian John Harris has asserted that the Sikhs wanted to avenge the annexation of the Sikh Empire eight years earlier by the Company with the help of Purabias (' Easterners '); Biharis and those from the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh who had formed part of the East India Company's armies in the First and Second Anglo-Sikh Wars.

The Asian Today had to represent the East and West Midlands where Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists hailing from Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa resided and so stories and features naturally had to reflect issues, concerns and celebrations important to those communities.