For fitness instructor Mona Safiedine, teaching aerobics has recently become something she's had to work out with God. Last year, after deciding to wear the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and follow her faith more closely, she knew her routine would have to change.


Now Safiedine confines her workouts to women-only gyms, in keeping with Islam's call for modesty. "I didn't feel right wearing tight clothes and teaching men at the same time," she says. And she has shunned pop music, citing an interpretation of Islamic law that forbids lyrics.

But beyond that, Safiedine, a 24-year-old Lebanese American, won't let anything stop her from carrying on with her six-day-a-week class schedule in everything from high-intensity kickboxing to yoga. "I wear the hijab when I enter the gym and take it off once I'm in," she explains. "Since men are not allowed, it's a safe zone for me."

In Dearborn, Michigan, the Arab-American hub where Safiedine grew up, her choice represents something of a trend among Arab Muslim women of her generation. Among those born in the United States to Arab immigrant parents, a movement to emphasize their Muslim identity is taking root.

"Everywhere I go, I am seeing girls covering right and left--even high school girls," says Safiedine, a graduate student involved in a religious pluralism project at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. "These are girls whose mothers don't even cover."

Although prayer had always been a part of Safiedine's life, other tenets of the faith had not--her friends joke that she used to throw a robe on over her mini skirt and pray before going to nightclubs--and she had long resisted the head scarf, considered mandatory by many observant Muslims.

Now she and others describe their decision to wear it as a journey of empowerment and spirituality. Yet it is also a journey they're embarking upon in a post-9/11 world, when Islam is looked upon with suspicion, even contempt.

Making a Place for Themselves

One in four Americans holds a negative view of Muslims, according to an October 2004 poll released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group based in Washington, D.C. Twenty-six percent of the 1,000 respondents reported a belief that Muslims teach violence and hatred; 27 percent said Muslims value human life less than others.

It helps little that nightly headline news from Iraq features terrorist beheadings and so-called "Islam experts" such as Bush appointee Daniel Pipes, board member at the U.S. Institute for Peace, incite fear with statements about U.S. Muslims' long-term designs to replace the Constitution with the Qur'an.

Such attitudes have motivated some young Arab Muslims to set the record straight about their maligned faith. Depicted as outsiders, they are attempting to reclaim their place in American society and, in the process, are forging a new Muslim-American identity.

"Today, many Muslims realize that it is not their Islamic identity but their American citizenship that is fragile," writes Muqtedar Khan, a fellow with the Michigan-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, in a 2003 New York Times editorial. Attacks on civil liberties, enshrined in such legislation as the PATRIOT Act and anti-terrorism measures, he adds, have served to marginalize and target Muslims as un-American.

The trend is perhaps most pronounced among women, because by wearing head scarves and long, concealing robes, they embody the Muslim presence in America.

"I feel a big responsibility on my shoulders, because now I'm a walking representative of Islam," says 22-year-old spoken-word poet Gihad Ali, who began veiling nearly two years ago after her mother died. "I knew it was going to be difficult following 9/11, but I thought, 'Fine, that's my test.'"

Ali, who was born and raised in Chicago, says she was tempted to put on the veil right after 9/11 to make a statement but felt that would be doing it for the wrong reasons. Instead, she waited until she could "cover for religious reasons" and now embraces her visibility as a Muslim as a way to dispel popular misconceptions.

One misconception is that veiled women are foreigners who do not speak English. While renewing her driver's license at the department of motor vehicles, Ali says the clerk behind the counter spoke to her in an exaggeratedly loud voice. "DO-YOU-WEAR-CONTACTS?" she asked.

"I don't know if she expected me to speak with an accent or have to use sign language," recalls Ali. But she knew her Islamic attire stood for something. "Just because I don't look like you and I dress differently doesn't mean I can't speak the same language," she says. "I have a job. I have family. I have friends and hobbies. The only difference is that I cover, and I have a different faith."

Ali has also made it a point to represent Muslim women on stage, where her fiery poems now include themes about Islamic women. "It's not just important for me but for all Muslim sisters that veil to let people know that we're not submissive, that we're not subordinate, that we're individuals," she says. She offers an impromptu line from one such poem: "When you look at me, see liberation, cause I'm not the product of some Osama-bin-Laden-Islamic-fundamentalist-type nation."