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Americans have almost been conditioned to believe that the majority of people who seek to do us harm are those of Muslim descent.

In America, we're trying to find a peaceful solution in the Middle East and we're not going to be divided along any lines, including religious lines, including ethnic backgrounds.

Broader social concerns within Muslim communities, such as discrimination, integration or socio-economic disadvantages, should be treated distinctively and not as part of counterterrorism agenda, which has been counter-productive.

The challenge for Muslims in America is to respect the fears of ordinary people while resisting the exploitation of those fears by political parties, lobbies and sectors of the media. To meet this challenge, Muslims must reassess their own involvement, behavior and contributions in American society.

We've got jihadists. That doesn't mean that all Muslims are problems with respect to terrorism, but there is something going on here. We've got a problem dealing with one aspect of one portion of modern Islam - just as hundreds of years ago the world had a problem with Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.

The way to tackle Muslimphobia is to tackle prejudice against Muslims. What it is not is to pretend that Islamist extremism does not exist.

Rhetoric that vilifies American Muslims is counter to our efforts. It's a setback to our Homeland Security efforts.

Whatever the reason, American Muslims appear far less inclined to support the global jihad than their European counterparts.

'Islamist terrorism.' The very phrase is contentious. No one wants to make this problem harder by unfairly branding and alienating a quarter of the world's population, and even in this construction, no one should be thinking this means all of Islam or all Muslims.