The European ProblemHow American Muslims could become as alienated as European Muslims.

This article appears in conjunction with a special weeklong series on Islam published by On Faith, the Washington Post's religion blog. To read more, visit On Faith.

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In February 2003, the U.S. District Court had granted the NYPD's request to modify the Handshu Agreement, which put limits on police surveillance, to allow, among other things, sending police informants into religious institutions, which is already common practice in Europe. This has had a profound impact on Muslims by substantially increasing domestic surveillance of mosques in America. The 2006 conviction of Matin may have been its first public result. Many Muslims felt that Matin's comments against U.S. foreign policy were being used to paint him as a potential terrorist and that a paid government informant who was decades older than him was pressuring him to plant a bomb in the subway station. The conclusion was that Muslims could not afford to voice their political beliefs.

Historically, the American Muslim immigrant population falls into a higher socioeconomic background than their European counterparts. But like Matin, the next generation of diversity visa winners and others are more similar to European Muslim immigrants. And many of the recent U.S. "terror plots" involve immigrants similar to European ones. While there might not be actual radicalization in the American Muslim community, there is a danger of increasing frustration leading to alienation. In June 2005, Hamid Hayat, a 23-year-old Pakistani-American farmhand with a sixth-grade education, was charged with attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan and being a part of a terror cell in Lodi, Calif. Later that year, Tashnuba Hayder, a 16-year-old Bangladeshi girl who grew up in Queens, N.Y., was accused of being a suicide bomber—though she was ultimately only charged with immigration violations and deported. To the Muslim American community, these cases represented a witch hunt against young Muslims who were being targeted for their interest in Islam and who had limited education or socioeconomic means. They certainly did not demonstrate proof of "homegrown terrorism." Rather, they were symbols of the disenfranchisement or disillusionment of these young Muslims from the mainstream society. Hayder herself illustrated this tension when she told the New York Times, "The F.B.I. tried to say I didn't have a life—like, I wasn't the typical teenager." While the vast majority of Muslim youth are wondering how they can be civically minded Muslim Americans, the government seems to be stuck on the theme of the radicalization of Muslim American youth. Perhaps they have received too much training in Europe.

European Muslims and American Muslims have not had much in common until now, but if we unreflectively adopt the European view of Muslims as the perpetual "other," we risk making this true. "Equality not integration" is the rallying cry of European Muslims. Ours is "due process." Some of our worst laws were passed and later regretted at times of reaction against ethnic communities, from the Palmer Raids of 1919 to today's Patriot Act. In a land founded by immigrants and the rule of law, our nation's strength lies in its resilience; our way of life depends on equal opportunity. Europe and European Muslims are suffering from the inability to bring Muslims into the economic and political mainstream. Will America turn its back on its rich heritage of celebrating diversity? Will we start to see Muslims as a "law and order" problem as Europe does, rather than as the next wave of dream-seekers?

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