My family is from Lebanon and I was born as a Maronite Christian. I'm not a Muslim, but I've written three books on contemporary Islamic issues. The latest book, Mecca and Main Street, grew out of trends I'd identified when I lived for many years in the Arab world, in Iran. Islamic revivalism was becoming more apparent in the public expression of Islamic identity here in the U.S., in the most unlikely of places, and it seemed a bit surprising. So, I decided to explore the depth of these trends and what this meant for American Muslims living in American society after 9/11.

The average non-Muslim Americans are not aware of what it is to be a Muslim in the post-9/11 environment. Part of that is based on distorted media coverage. It also has to due with the fact that before 9/11, people here weren't even aware that there were Muslims living here! They suddenly woke up to a minority that, for the most part, had been invisible. This has had a great effect, not only on Americans, but also on Muslims.

Muslims were then faced with the hardships of trying to define themselves and trying to explain their religion, which had suddenly become an American obsession. So, they faced a lot of responsibilities.

They had to first distance themselves from the types of Muslim stereotypes that Americans were then being exposed to on television, in print media and by the U.S. government. The primary challenge was to convey the message: "We're not like these militants you are seeing on television."

The second challenge was to try to educate the mainstream about their faith and Islamic doctrine, which was not the interpretation of the extremists. Muslims felt they had to educate people that Islam is not a religion, at least among mainstream Muslims, that promotes violence.

The third challenge was really determining how to protect themselves from an increasingly hostile society. This is where the second generation - the younger Muslims - really took the responsibility upon themselves, and they took several approaches to protecting themselves. They became more involved in their mosques, in Islamic schools and in Muslim student associations on college campuses.

There are no statistics on the membership growth in these Muslim student associations, but anecdotally, the numbers I collected were quite high compared to those before 9/11. Because it was not the result of a huge influx of Muslim students on college campuses, one must assume that those Muslim students who were not involved before, suddenly felt a need to connect with other Muslims and develop a public Muslim identity that had not existed before.

I focused on the youth because I think the youth embrace of Islam is a very different immigrant experience for this country. If you take the example of Lebanese Christians in America, as each generation has been born here, they become more disconnected from Arabic, Lebanon and the Middle East, rather than more connected. The trend among Muslim youth is the reverse, not only here, but also in Europe. This speaks to something significant.

As Muslim youth seek to assert their identity, it creates strained relationships, but the hardships are not something they are all that candid about. They think that by speaking publicly about the strains, it will make the situation worse. There is some truth to that, but it's important to recognize that institution building is a good thing, because it will empower Muslims in the U.S. The flip side of that is that there's less incentive to interact with mainstream people who are not Muslims. So, 9/11 has two opposite effects: growing empowerment, but also growing alienation.

It's hard to say what the long term implications of this segregation will be, but I think on a positive note, there are some non-Muslim Americans, particularly those who are more educated, who have reached out to Muslim communities, visited mosques and held Islamic lectures, et cetera. I think that's something that will continue and which is very positive.

On the other hand, in the current climate, Americans are so influenced by global events, and that's what is causing the divide. It's almost reached the point where Americans don't distinguish between the Muslims at home and the Muslims abroad. We don't know how global events will play out, but I think that the Muslim-American experience depends more on what happens elsewhere, rather than here in the U.S. This will be a great challenge and source of conflict for both sides in the years to come.

The recent Christianne Amanpour CNN special God's Warriors suggested that the escalation of conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim society is inevitable. However, I don't believe the conflict will be based on religion. Right now I'm working on a new book, which is about how the Muslims in the broader Islamic world are creating their own path toward westernization-and the path is not necessarily Western or based on doctrine, but more of a hybrid between East and West.

Gender issues are a prime example of how westernization and doctrine intersect. There's overwhelming evidence that the modern Muslim woman is a woman who has a PhD and also wears a head scarf. It reflects the process of Muslims finding the place for religion in the modern world. I don't see the world in terms of Christianity versus Islam; I see the world in terms of each religion internally fighting for supremacy.

In the Islamic world, it's the internal struggle to reconcile Islamic principles with a state, which is somewhat democratic. Egypt was a prime example of this. How can a society that has been repressed by an authoritarian state that is officially secular a) get rid of an authoritarian government, and b) create a government influenced by Islamic principles?

If elections were held there today, it's pretty certain that the Muslim Brotherhood would gain vast seats in the parliament. It has nothing to do with Christianity or Jihadism for that matter.

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Muslims are living through unprecedented circumstances in the modern world - those circumstances being not only 9/11, but also globalization, feminism, et cetera. Irrespective of 9/11, if you just took a young Muslim woman in America and asked her what concerns her, her answer would be that she doesn't necessarily want to become a typical American, who leads a vacuous life and spends her weekends at the shopping mall.

The intensification of an Islamic identity as a response to globalization is something to be admired - Muslims are trying to find an alternative to what has become a very empty life in the modern world.

One of the big questions is always, "What do Muslim women want?" I worked as the Iran correspondent for the British paper The Guardian for some years, and it was clear to me that it's very complicated. In Iran, certainly there were women who were very westernized and didn't want to wear head scarves, but the society is far more religious than the U.S. government tries to claim.

I think Iranian women would rather have the choice - to veil or not to veil. I think what people oppose is the fact that it's mandatory. The important thing for American people to understand is that whatever opposition there is to a current regime, it's not because people are anti-Islam; it's because they don't like the hardliners.

I was forced by the reformers to leave Iran along with my ex-husband, who at the time was the Iran bureau chief for Reuters news agency. The reason that foreign journalists were allowed to live in Iran during that time of press freedom was because President Khatami's government wanted the West to believe that some form of democracy was coming to Iran. By 2000, it was clear that it was a failed experiment. It was seen as too risky and threatening to the hardliners and the regime.

In my articles, I was writing that the conservatives were again reasserting themselves in the state and Khatami was failing, which of course became obvious as recently as 2003, but it wasn't apparent if you weren't living in Iran. I wasn't following the script, and I needed to follow the script in order to be allowed to continue living there. I cannot return to Iran. I have been declared persona non grata. Although I would like to return for research purposes, I have no feelings about it one way or the other.

I've come to believe that it's really difficult for Muslims and Arabs to live in the United States and Europe-maybe not so in Canada. I think many of them wish they could go back to the Middle East, though certainly not for economic reasons, since their lives are more prosperous here. I've met so many people, from college professors to taxi cab drivers, who say if the economic situation was different, they would go back. There is a great cultural divide, and people don't feel comfortable in their homeland or the West. They don't see the situation vastly improving.

Bridging the divide has rested mostly on the shoulders of Muslim people. I think everybody, from the media and non-Muslims to Muslims themselves, need to make changes in how the public debate takes place. Non-Muslims need to become a lot more educated, and that's happening on a very small scale here in the U.S.

There are universities now that have Islamic Studies and this kind of thing. The problem is that it can take up to half a generation for anything to change.

While non-Muslims are making efforts, the media is a big problem. It is institutionally biased, and the bias is very nuanced now, and so harder to deconstruct. It's not as it was in the early days after 9/11, when the bias was very obvious, focusing almost entirely on Islamic militants. People reading The New York Times may not notice the subtle bias, and they just end up walking away with a certain impression.

When The New York Times reports on Muslims in America, the overriding message is usually that secular Muslims in America are the good Muslims and the religious Muslims who wear head scarves are the bad Muslims and are unpatriotic. I don't really have much faith in the media at all. Any education that will reach the general public will have to come from other quarters.

The Muslims need to do more than they're doing now as well. Some organizations have certainly been very involved in policy debates in Washington, but we really haven't found an effective approach to informing policy debate. Some Muslim activists use the unsophisticated argument that, "Islam is a religion of peace," which of course can easily be discredited.

Then you have a new trend, which is equally ineffectual and says, "We are Muslims, we wear head scarves, we are regular mosque goers, but there is no difference between us and you." This apologist argument is also easily discredited. It's incumbent upon Muslims to create a better strategy that is believable.

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Unfortunately I think things will get worse before they get better. I think a new administration in the U.S. could help, but it will depend on global events. Continuing conflict in the Middle East is inevitable. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going to be solved any time soon; the Iraq War is definitely not going to end any time soon.

I think the people here will continue to associate all Muslims together. We've already seen statistically the increase of hate crimes against Muslims since 9/11 in this country. I think we'll continue to see those kinds of numbers until things change globally.

My next book is about how the Muslim world is becoming more anti-Western. The reason I think this research is so important is so the West will stop trying to coerce and poke the Muslim world to be just like it. That, I believe, is the fundamental problem.