How did this unlikely pairing—a Muslim from Bangladesh and a Jew from the United States—come to be true brothers; and how did they combine to fight against terror and intolerance and for interfaith understanding and religious equality?

For Richard Benkin, that morning in 2003 began inauspiciously, as most things do. He was at his computer, reading, writing, blogging for Israel, and communicating with people of all faiths worldwide, when he noticed an email from an unknown source. His normal impulse was to delete it as spam, but for some reason, he did not. Little did he know that this momentary lapse would change his life and the lives of many others. For half a world away, in Bangladesh, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Muslim journalist, had determined to end the informational jihad being perpetrated against his people. Benkin opened the email to read a plea from Choudhury, bemoaning the highly biased and tightly controlled news about Israel and the Jewish people in his country. “It was wrong,” Choudhury said, and he was trying to change that. He wrote to a few people asking for their help in bringing his people unbiased and uncensored news about the Middle East through his Bangladesh weekly. He asked for access to alternate news sources, networks with other people, and news and opinion pieces. Choudhury, who learned about Benkin through the latter’s published articles that appeared on the internet, was convinced that free and open information would spark real interfaith dialogue and ultimately lead Muslim nations including Bangladesh to recognize and normalize relations with Israel.

Like most Americans, Benkin knew very little about Bangladesh, but as he said later, “I did know about antisemitism and the rise of Muslim extremism in the non-Arab Muslim world, and I knew that the phrase ‘Never Again’ should lead us to do all we can for people like Shoaib and to support what he was risking his own life to do.” And so he answered the letter. The two corresponded daily; shared their hopes and dreams, goals, and concerns. They soon realized that each was as committed as the other to seeing this fight against hate and terrorism through—not with a gun or bomb, but with a weapon much more powerful than that: with the truth; by giving people information—the greatest fear of our enemies. Benkin helped get Choudhury the resources he needed and Choudhury helped Benkin pro-Israeli and pro-interfaith articles in the Bangladesh press. For the first time, there appeared to be some open exchange of ideas on this subject in the Bangladesh press. Even the Prime Minister was following it.

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