On Being Muslim and American.

• Author: Mellendorf, Haloren
• Position: Book review

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Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim

Sabeeha Rehman

Arcade Publishing. 316 pages. $25.99

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Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

Arsalan Iftikhar

Hot Books. 136 pages. $21.99

Sabeeha Rehman remembers walking through the crowds of angry protesters in downtown Manhattan as she made her way to a public hearing that would decide the fate of the Park51 construction project--better known in the news as the "Mosque at Ground Zero."

"A what? At where?" she remembers thinking when she first heard the term. "Where did that phrase come from? It's not a mosque we are building, and it's not at Ground Zero."

She was right. Park51 wasn't meant to be a mosque. It was intended to be a Muslim community center--a place for "faith, fun, fitness, R&R, and interfaith gatherings," as she describes it in her book. And it wasn't at Ground Zero, but two blocks north of where the World Trade Center had once stood. But that didn't matter to the protesters who clogged the streets of Lower Manhattan, carrying signs with anti-Islam slogans, as Rehman made her way to the meeting hall. She kept her head down as she walked.

The hearing was packed with people, most of whom were carrying signs similar to those of the protesters outside. "We are not trespassers," Rehman wanted to tell them. "Ground Zero is sacred to us, too; it is our tragedy, too.... Don't they see that we are not those people?"

Even though the Park51 project was approved and a temporary Islamic prayer space opened in September 2011, full construction was never completed. Last year, the owner was persuaded to take advantage of the thriving real estate market in lower Manhattan and convert the building into luxury condominiums. This victory of prejudice over pluralism reinforced the devastating effects that 9/11 had, and continues to have, on the American Muslim community.

"All of those efforts to build mosques, Muslim community centers, raising the profile of Islam, getting our children to feel comfortable and confident as Muslims, all smothered in the rubble of the towers," writes Rehman in her new memoir, Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim.

The book is a strikingly honest account of Rehman's experience as a Muslim in America. Born and raised in Pakistan, Rehman came to New York City in the early 1970s following an arranged...