In the wake of 9/11, Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Egypt and other countries have found themselves living in a newly suspicious America. Many of their businesses and mosques have been closely monitored by the US federal agents, thousands of men have been deported and some have simply been swept away - "rendered" in the language of the CIA - to be interrogated or jailed overseas.
But Muslim immigrants are not alone in experiencing the change. It is now touching lives of some American converts: men and women raised in this country, whose only tie to the Middle East or Southeast Asia is one of faith, a report in New York Times said.
Khalid Hakim, born Charles Karolik in Milwaukee, could not renew the document required to work as a merchant mariner because he refused to remove his cap, for an identity photograph last year.
Yet for nearly three decades Hakim's cap had posed no problem with the same New York City office of Coast Guard.
In Brooklyn, Deirdre Small and Stephanie Lewis drove New York City Transit buses for years wearing their hijabs, or head scarves, with no protest from supervisors.
After 9/11 women were ordered to remove religious garments. They refused, and were transferred, along with two other Muslim converts, out of the public eye - to jobs vacuuming, cleaning and parking buses, said the women, who are suing Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York City Transit.
"I'm a US citizen and I'm supposed to be protected," Ms Lewis, 55, said with tears in her eyes.
"On 9/11 I was scheduled to take policemen to that site. I felt compassion like everyone else. And now you're singling me out because I'm a Muslim?" New York City Transit officials said they would not comment as case is in litigation.
Regardless of how their cases play out legally, Hakim, Lewis and other converts have come to view America after 9/11 through a singular lens.
An estimated 25 percent of American Muslims are converts. Some came of age as Americans first and discovered Islam as adults. In years since 9/11, many have faced a contest of loyalties they never imagined between their nation and their faith.
They watched events up close and from afar - raids of mosques, deportation of Muslim immigrants, incendiary language from abroad and threats made against their American homeland - with a special, if complicated brand of anger and loyalty, affection and worry, according to New York Times.
Straddling two worlds came naturally to Ms Small, who grew up in East Flatbush with a Christian mother and a Muslim father. But she spent more time in mosques than in churches.
It was daily expression of Islam and its emphasis on "oneness of God" that won her heart to religion, said Small: five daily prayers, way sentences are capped with words like Inshallah, which means "God willing."
At 12 she became one of few girls in her neighbourhood to wear a hijab. If this called for bravery, Ms Small shrugs it off. She has worn scarf ever since, growing used to occasional stare that multiplied after 9/11. If anything, she is drawn to daring.
From beginning, Small wore a navy blue hijab to match her uniform. No one objected, she said, until after 9/11. The first trouble came with a more recent hire, Malikah Alkebulan, who said she was asked to wear a transit authority cap over her scarf after starting work in March 2002.
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