After the attacks of 9/11, Muslim immigrants were seen as a potential threat in the USA. They have since become model citizens -- and now they want a greater say in politics.
Six years after Sept. 11, 2001, America and its Muslim immigrants seem to be on surprisingly good terms.
They get along, they discover common interests, and it almost seems as if America's latest immigrants want to prove to everyone that they are the better Americans.
Many recent Muslim immigrants arrived in the mid-1970s and came from Southeast Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, the Arab countries, Europe and Africa. They are responsible for making Islam a fixture in "God's own country."
There are already an estimated 3 to 7 million American Muslims today. No one knows exactly how many, though, because the United States has no religious census and church registers are not used in Islam.
Most of America's new Muslims adapted quickly, eager to become model citizens. Unlike other minorities -- the Chinese or Italians -- Muslims did not isolate themselves in distinct urban neighborhoods but tended to blend in.
They were quiet and industrious, and once they had been granted asylum in the US, they stayed to make money.
They wanted their children to have better lives, to go to school and earn degrees that would enable them to lead middle-class lives as lawyers, doctors and academics.
They were not interested in politics. But then came Sept. 11. In the space of a single morning, taxi drivers, cooks and waiters suddenly became potential terrorists.
Hate crimes against Muslims jumped by more than 1,600 percent in the following year. That September day in 2001 seemed to mark the end of a dream.
Five thousand men were placed in preventive detention merely because of their Arab birthplaces and, a short time later, government agents questioned 170,000 Muslim men.
Applications for citizenship were turned down and many Muslims were deported. But if there is an American answer to every problem, then America's Muslims provided the most American of all answers to Sept. 11. They saw the date as both a challenge and an opportunity.
Six years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, American Muslims are now self-confident and more influential than ever before.
They earn as much money as the average American, they go on talk shows to tell their success stories and they are beginning to run for political office.
American senators offer Muslims internships, members of Congress hire Muslim press secretaries and chiefs of staff and the US State Department recently appointed a female Muslim ambassador who also happens to be its chief advisor on issues of equality.
Muslims are everywhere in US politics: in government agencies and in the White House, in Congress and on city councils, in city halls and on planning commissions.
They are the new imperative of political correctness in the United States. A year ago President George W. Bush announced: "America is stronger because of the countless contributions of Muslim citizens."
Less than six months later, in February 2007, he nominated Zalmay Khalilzad, a native of Afghanistan, to the position of US ambassador to the United Nations.
Khalilzad is now the most important Muslim in the US cabinet.
'Simply accepted as a fact'
There are already several influential Muslim interest groups in the US today. One is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which almost always sends one of its representatives to make the rounds of the talk shows whenever a US flag is set on fire somewhere else in the world.
Another is the American Muslim Alliance, which aims to send Muslims to the Capitol. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) is deeply involved in civil rights issues.
Americans are even entrusting Muslims with key positions, such as that of the deputy mayor of Los Angeles, a job with important homeland security responsibilities.
Arif Alikhan, a devout Sunni and the son of Pakistani immigrants, has held the position since September 2006. He wears a shirt and tie; his suits are better-fitting than those of most Americans. He's in his late 30s. His office on the third floor of the Los Angeles city hall is only three doors down from the mayor's office. He began his career seven years ago, when he took a job with the Department of Justice hunting down computer hackers, crooks who were selling merchandise on Ebay at rock-bottom prices.
In his former position as an assistant US attorney, Alikhan consistently did his work accurately and silently, never producing any headlines. But then he suddenly became one of the most important men in Los Angeles, America's second-largest city after New York.
As the city's computer and telecommunications crime coordinator, Alikhan is in the process of hiring new police officers.
The job is as big as it is crucial: Close to four million people live in Los Angeles proper, while the metropolitan area is home to 18 million.
Los Angeles could well be the target of the next terrorist attack. There was no commotion when Alikhan was appointed, nor did any newspaper so much as question why someone like him should be placed in charge of the security of America's second-largest city.
It was simply accepted as a fact. "I never had the feeling that my religion is written on my forehead," he says.
Trial by Fire Sixty-five percent of America's Muslim community was born abroad. It is just beginning to develop its own institutions and produce its first representatives. Immigration experts call this stage the embryonic phase.
But Sept. 11 threw them into the public spotlight, forcing them to make certain decisions. "Our generation has grown up, and it realizes that we are Americans," says Amina Masood, assistant to New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter.
By the time Congressman Tom Tancredo, from Colorado, proposed in August of 2007 that America should bomb Mecca if a nuclear attack were staged on American soil -- a suggestion that made headlines around the world -- American Muslims were in a position to speak for themselves.
The Last of the Muslim Republicans
That was the case with Masrur Javed Khan, 56. Only a few years ago, this friendly, thoughtful and charming man could hardly have imagined giving up his well-paying job as a project manager for a Texas oil company.
But then came Sept. 11 and everything happened at once. Khan felt that he had to set an example, so he decided to go into politics. Friends told him that he was crazy, but Khan, a Pakistan-born engineer who had come to the United States as a student in 1975, remained resolute.
"For 30 years not a single American asked me about my religion," he said. "Only my work and my performance counted. Anyone who votes for me now should also be voting for me for that reason."
In November 2003, Khan ran for a seat on the city council in his adopted hometown of Houston and won -- as the first Muslim immigrant in US history.
Even more remarkable was the fact that the majority of voters in his election district -- District F -- were Catholic Latinos.
Khan proudly recounts how he knocked on at least 3,000 doors during the campaign. He wanted voters to see him as a public servant and as someone who respects the common good.
Khan says that public service is entirely compatible with his religion. Today he is embroiled in a dispute with the city administration for the construction of a park in District F -- his pet project.
He is also involved in programs to combat violence and drugs in his district 'It's different in the Christian rural areas' America's new Muslims come from all over the world, speak dozens of languages and practice a wide range of rites.
This pluralism, immigration experts repeatedly emphasize, is perhaps their greatest advantage.
Unlike European Muslims with their virtually monolithic blocs -- Algerians in France or Turks in Germany, for example -- no single Muslim group sets the tone in the United States.
An estimated 400,000 Muslims live in the greater Chicago area alone -- Sunnis next to Shiites, white converts next door to black imams.
The community includes Iranians, Turks, Somalis and Bosnians -- and the Arabs in Bridgeview.
The neighborhood in the western part of the city is the quintessential American dream: rows of single-family homes with basketball hoops over the garage door, manicured lawns and brand-new Pontiacs.
A group of boys plays basketball on the neighborhood court. But at the center of town is an imposing mosque surrounded by a large, green lawn, about as unreal as an oriental UFO.
Hind Makki, a petite student, proudly takes visitors on a tour of the mosque. Women pray on the lower level and men up above.
Makki, 25, says that her dream job is to work for the State Department in Washington. She comes from a conservative family.
Her parents emigrated from Sudan but, she says, it was her choice to wear the headscarf.
"People in Chicago are totally relaxed about the hijab. It's different in the Christian rural areas. That's where they give you a hard time."
Most businesses in Bridgeview are geared toward a predominantly Muslim clientele.
Fast-food restaurants clearly identify dishes containing pork, and during the month of Ramadan, furniture stores decorate their displays with tinsel garlands.
But it hasn't always been this peaceful. On the day after Sept. 11, when the images of the fallen towers had barely taken hold in the collective consciousness, residents of a nearby trailer park had banded together and planned to attack the mosque.
Church elders and the police managed to avert violence, but the group did inflict some minor damage.
"Jealousy was part of it," says Makki, "they were lower-class whites who couldn't stand the fact that we live in nicer houses than they do."
Makki's American heroes are other whites: Ralph Nader, for example, the leftist consumer advocate and sometime presidential candidate; and Christine Rodogno, a Republican who in 2001 introduced the Halal Food Act, a law that regulates the proper labeling of Islamic food products.
It appears that the United States has a more effective immigration policy than Europe. Less well-educated Muslims tended to go to the United States, while others went to the Old World.
In Europe, for the most part, they remained part of the lower classes. This is why Washington's Department of Homeland Security is not overly concerned that US Muslims could be planning the next terrorist attack.
Muslims from Great Britain and continental Europe seem far more suspicious. The United States, the land of religious refugees, is more open to religion than secular Europe. Debates over headscarves or mosques are less likely to ruffle feathers in the United States.
And while America has 250 Islamic schools, Great Britain has less than half as many, France has only three and Germany has none at all.
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