This week has been rough for the American Muslim community. Besides the Boston Marathon bombing attacks, there was an incident on the Brooklyn subway that, while didn’t result in any lives lost, was very disturbing (and could not have had worst timing): A Brooklyn teenager, Stephen Stowe, is alleged to have harassed a Jewish subway rider:

The melee began when suspect Stephan Stowe, 17, and a group of eight friends approached a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke aboard a Brooklyn-bound 3 train just before 3 p.m. Monday, police sources said Wednesday.

“Assalamu Alaikum,” Stowe said to the man, using a common greeting among Muslims that means, “Peace be with you,” court documents allege.

When the man ignored the greeting, Stowe allegedly became combative…

“I’m going to kill you right now,” Stowe said, according to cops and court records. He then swore at the man, according to cops and court records, and in an apparent reference to the Holocaust added, “They should have killed all of you.”

The confrontation escalated into a full on police brawl, which is disturbing in itself. But my first reaction was, seriously? Who does that in New York? It’s not a city you can survive in for long, emotionally or physically, if you have such outright antagonism for other races and cultures. Stowe’s just a teenager, but his alleged actions are pretty egregious.

I expected the discussion on Reddit’s r/Judaism to be equally irate, but it’s actually pleasantly level-headed and surprisingly and inspirationally empathic:

From user PerrierAndSaltines:

To me, it sounds like this interaction became combative because of a mutual dislike. We cannot combat hate with hate. I have (as I think we all should) a very strong feeling of singularity with Muslim people, and if a Muslim greeted me in the fashion described, I would have at least said “Thank you” or even offered a “Shalom”.

And user lhagler

You know, while this teen was completely out of line and deserved to be taken into custody…would it have been so hard for the Jewish gentleman to just return his originally (according to the article) very polite greeting? Sounds like he might have been reaching out.

Maybe it’s just a sign of how cynical I’ve become that I expect people from communities that have been attacked to reflexively react with anger and fear, but reading the graciousness in this discussion really brightened my day after this terrible week.