When Mohammed Al Samawi was growing up in Yemen, the son of a pair of middle-class doctors, teachers taught him that Jews and Christians were enemies destined for hell.

“We were trained as children to hate,” he told an audience of some 450 at an antisemitism conference in Denver last week.

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Like many of his friends, Mohammed began to learn some English as a teenager by watching American movies and listening to American music. In his 20s, when he started taking classes in English to better his mastery of the language for business opportunities, he met a teacher named Luke.

Some 450 people gathered for the Congress to Confront Antisemitism and Protect Democracy in Denver last week. (Vince Bzdek, The Gazette)

Luke taught Mohammed a new kind of intellectual curiosity, and a friendship blossomed. But Mohammed was disturbed that the Christian man’s fate seemed sealed: according to the Quran, he was damned to hell. He asked Luke to read the Quran in hopes of saving him.…