While Huckabee and Romney are teaching religious bigotry, a more painful but also more hopeful story emerged from New York City, where some of their spiritual students attempted putting their attitudes into practice.

Walter Adler was with his girlfriend and two other friends returning from dinner out. Getting on a New York subway, he replied “Happy Chanukah” to a group of 10 students who were saying “Merry Christmas” to people. The students started yelling anti-Semitic slurs, and attacked him and the others. One of the attackers rolled up his sleeve revealing a tattoo of Jesus. According to the NY Post’s account One attacker said, “‘Happy Hanukkah, that’s when the Jews killed Jesus,.’ “

Blaming Jews today for the killing of Jesus has led to thousands of murders by “good Christians.” This could well have been another in that long line of atrocities.

But another man was on that subway car. Hassan Askari, a young man from Bangladesh, saw the attack and intervened. He got beaten himself for his efforts, but his intervention gave Adler time to trip an emergency brake and get police help. No one else intervened, neither Christian nor Jew nor Secularist. Not anyone.

The Post has a very good video of the two young men and Adler’s girlfriend discussing the event. I recommend loking at it.

An honors student at Hunter College, Adler said “He’s basically a hero. Hassan jumped in to help us.” Askari, who is studying accounting, denied being a hero. The Post quotes him as saying

“I just did what I had to do,” he recalled. “My parents raised me that way.”

Askari is also a Muslim. Adler observed “A random Muslim guy jumped in and helped a Jewish guy on Hanukkah – that’s a miracle.”

In a way it is, but it’s a miracle that demonstrates two important truths, truths largely forgotten by all too many Americans today.

First, ALL major religions appeal to good people and fortify then with profound teachings, just as all can appeal to the most demented bigots and help them ignore what exists of their conscience and compassion. The demonization of Muslims in this country is yet another instance in a long line of bigoted atrocities that stains our history. Some Americans never learn. They are as impermeable as the hardest rock when it comes to human decency. But they are the minority, albeit one whose raging self-righteousness gives them power beyond their numbers when decent people are intimidated, as Askari was not.

(This is not to deny that some Muslims are fundamentalist bigots, only that not all Muslims are by a long shot, nor that their bigotry is any worse than the Christian record. Doubts? Take this test…) Islam is one of the great religions of the world, and legitimately so. (Quite an admission from a Pagan!) I recommend No god but God, by Reza Aslan. To be sure, his view of Islam is not a majority one. But who would have believed that Christianity was compatible with democracy in 1700? And of course, today some Christians still deny that it is.

Second, large cosmopolitan cities are places where people of many faiths, and of no faith at all, can mingle in freedom and safety. This can and does lead to friendship across lines that once would have been maintained by mutual violence. Such a society brings out the best in us by helping us overcome our fear of those who seem different from us.

I currently live in a small community, and frankly prefer such communities. But I am always aware that what makes these communities as desirable as they are is their proximity to the culture of large cities. Here in Sonoma County, California, civilization is strengthened by our proximity to the San Francisco Bay area. Earlier, when I lived in the more remote Canton, NY, the same result arose from its being a university town with a cosmopolitan student and faculty population.

Needless to say, cosmopolitan communities such as these are bitterly denounced by the religious bigots who make up so much of the Republican “base.”

The West has 2000 years of religious violence against peaceful others. Huckabee, Romney, and others of their ilk are watering the seeds that, if they sprout in sufficient numbers, can bring it all back to us today. One shoot raised its head in a New York subway. It was plucked.

UPDATE
One of the historically most ignorant and politically most foolish portions of our population are American Jews who consider themselves Neoconservatives, and who have allied themselves with forces vastly more numerous than they who, historically, have oppressed and even murdered them. For being Jewish. Their actions are a good rebuttal to anyone thinking Jews are smarter than other people. It complements NY Representative Charles B. Rangel’s observation that George Bush “. . . shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all; it shows that, in this great country, anybody can become president.”

I have been wondering when some might wake up to what they are helping create. One of the worst, Charles Krauthammer, seems to be doing so. Firedog Lake alerted me to his newly awakening sentience. For Krauthammer’s own column, see here.