A Muslim In America

Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying on what it means to be a Muslim immigrant to America.

I was born a Muslim in Bangladesh – one of the world’s most populous Muslim countries. I spent most of my childhood there. I have spent part of my childhood and all of my adult life in the United States. Like most children growing up in the Third World during that time, I was fascinated with America. America was the land of Coca-Cola, bell-bottom pants, and Western movies. America was also the land of Thomas Jefferson, FDR and John and Robert Kennedy. America was the land of the Bill of Rights, the Marshall Plan and Martin Luther King, Jr. Most of all, America to me represented possibility.