Source: The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/08/16/post_911_faiths_rallied_to_protect_muslims/
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, leaders in New Brunswick, N.J., had an immediate concern: protecting their Muslim neighbors.
The city, a university and healthcare industry hub of 50,000, is on the commuter rail run into New York City, 30 miles away, and Middlesex County, its home, mourned 70 dead residents following 9/11.
Yet when an Episcopal priest warned the local police chief that hotheads might retaliate by attacking an Islamic society property, the chief replied that he had already sent officers to protect against any violence. Up against an environment of fear and grief, when some sought vigilante vengeance, New Brunswick instead rallied to protect its Muslim neighbors.
This surprised Gustav Niebuhr, then a New York Times religion reporter. He and his colleagues had expected a widespread backlash of anti-Muslim hostility after the attacks; he remembered such anger during the first Gulf war. More commonly, he discovered, communities came together to support local Muslims.
With the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attack approaching, Niebuhr, now a religion and journalism professor at Syracuse University, came to Newton Free Library this week to talk about the New Brunswick story and others from his new book, "Beyond Tolerance." (Viking).
Researching it, he roamed the country to find numerous unsung examples of dialogue and cooperation between religious believers of different faiths. Far from being a nation locked in religious civil war, we are, he told his audience, in the midst of "a great and growing countertrend to religious intolerance," in which Americans share their disparate religious beliefs "without ignoring differences, without trying to sand down all those things that make us interesting and diverse."