Granted, I owe the majority of my religious education to the Animaniacs Christmas special.

But I’m fairly certain burning a Qur’an is not something Jesus would do.

In late July, an evangelical pastor named Terry Jones announced on YouTube his plan to torch about 200 copies of “the book that is responsible for 9/11” on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Under normal circumstances, somebody like Jones would be ignored in the way that raving lunatics on street corners are ignored. But with the so-called Ground Zero mosque controversy in full swing, “International Burn a Qur’an Day” found marginal support on the Internet, attracting several thousand fans on Facebook. (For comparison’s sake, Animaniacs has a combined 25,000 “likes.”)

Then cable news got a load of him.

Quite suddenly, Jones went from local crank to international super-villain; from Gainesville, Fla. pastor commanding the attention of a few dozen parishioners to reviled celebrity commanding the attention of the world.

Despite overwhelming disapproval of the book burning, he vowed to go ahead with torching Islam’s holiest text.

To appreciate the depth of his pathology, you must understand his sanctimony: “Jesus would not run around burning books,” Jones would tell ABC Nightline, “but I think He would burn this one.”

Never mind that nearly every political, cultural and religious figure in the world condemned his plans as insensitive, immoral and dangerous. Never mind that Muslims took to the streets in droves to protest the planned book burning. Never mind that U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates personally called the pastor to tell him Qur’an burning “would put the lives of our forces at risk, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The pastor knew he had God on his side. Then, three days before Sept. 11, he changed his mind.

For reasons that remain unclear — but explicitly not for the troops’ sake, he says — he cancelled the book burning. On Sept. 11, he announced: “We will definitely not burn the Qur’an ... Not today, not ever.”

Whether he knows it or not, Jones did America a great service, twice: First by proposing something so objectionable that it united Americans in disgust, then by thinking better of it.

In 2010, the U.S. is a profoundly polarized country. Despite Obama’s best efforts, the audacity of bipartisanship has not been an effective slogan. But look at this …

President Obama: “What [Pastor Jones is] proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans.”

Sarah Palin: “Book burning is antithetical to American ideals.”

For the first time since Obama took office, the two competing faces of America have found a common voice. Jones gave the country an opportunity to re-articulate American values in an effective way.

Terry Jones helped Americans remember who they are — and, perhaps more importantly, who they are not.

For the G.O.P., which has been courting the lunatic fringe for midterm election votes, Jones came to represent the absolute ugliest version of itself — and the Republicans didn’t like what they saw.

Call it a “Scared Straight!” moment.

So what if Newt Gingrich relapsed on brain poison again, announcing a few days ago that Obama’s problem is that he brings a “colonial Kenyan mentality” to the White House.

For a shining, sober moment, America was exactly the country its better self strives to be.

Let’s be clear: America didn’t tell Jones he couldn’t burn the Qur’an; America told him he shouldn’t burn the Qur’an. Gratifyingly, that was enough to persuade a man who spews Islamophobic rhetoric not to engage in Islamophobic action.

And it is extremely important to remember that, as repugnant and widespread as anti-Islamic rhetoric has become in America, it has remained just that: rhetoric.

In a compelling Time cover story last month — entitled “Does America Have a Muslim Problem?” — journalist Bobby Ghosh provides insight into the plight of the Muslim in post-9/11 America.

Ghosh describes a social landscape marred by fear, suspicion and hostility. But he also points out that “the American strain of Islamophobia lacks some of the traditional elements of religious persecution — there’s no sign that violence against Muslims is on the rise, for example.”

In fact, according to Uniform Crime Report’s Hate Crime Statistics, only 7.7 percent of reported cases of religious bias in 2008 were anti-Islamic. For some perspective, 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.

Even if you control for population size, the post-9/11 landscape is, at least in terms of religion-related hate crimes, several-fold more perilous for Jews than for Muslims (an unwelcome surprise, perhaps, for the doctrinaire Left, which sees Islamophobes under every bed).

Credit where credit is due: America has been attacked by Muslim extremists on multiple occasions in the past decade and is at war with a Muslim country. One lifetime ago, when Japanese-Americans found themselves in an analogous situation during WWII, America’s response was to abuse, to imprison, to revoke essential rights.

In 2010 it is to spew vitriol.

This is not a difference of degree. It is a different ball game.

Christian Americans prefer the Bible; Jewish Americans prefer the Torah; Muslim Americans prefer the Qur’an; I prefer my religion satirized and in cartoon format. If “International Burn a Qur’an Day” has taught us anything, it is that America is still one of the few places on Earth where we all can co-exist.

Cody Gault is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at cgault@cornellsun.com. Stakes Is High appears alternate Thursdays this semester.