Soul Food:

As the title of Ali-Karamali’s book suggests, she faults the media for a lot of this and so does Hasan. A Pew survey last year showed the media to be the biggest influence on 32% of respondents when it came to their views about Muslims.

Nearly half of those who held negative views of Muslims said the media most influenced their opinions.

Personal experience and education were less often cited but cited far more often by those with favorable perceptions of Muslims.

Both Ali-Karamali and Hasan point to the disproportionate coverage given to Islamic extremists compared to stories about American Muslims they consider “mainstream.”

They write of the harping on jihad and hijab and the misconceptions of both. Jihad, which has come to be synonymous with “holy war,” literally means “to strive” or “to struggle.”

Hasan describes it as “a challenge from God to improve oneself constantly.” She talks of her jihad not to overspend on her shoe budget.

Neither Hasan nor Ali-Karamali wears hijab, the scarf or veil that some Muslim women wear. They do not hold to an interpretation of the Qur’an that says it is obligatory.

But neither do they criticize the Muslim women who do. As each author says time and again, Islam here and throughout the world is diverse.

Muslims come from various economic backgrounds and, as Hasan writes, “nearly every ethnicity you can imagine.” Each repeats what I often repeat myself: Not all Arabs are Muslims and not all — not even most — Muslims are Arabs.

The Pew study last year portrayed the Muslim community in the U.S. this way: 38% white, 26% black, 20% Asian, 12% other and 4% Hispanic. They may speak different languages and come from vastly different cultures.

There are more than 50 Islamic countries in the world.

Ali-Karamali faults the media for attributing social, political and economic problems in the Middle East and Africa to Islam rather than to cultural factors.

Yet many Muslims themselves remain unaware of what is a cultural influence on their faith rather than a teaching of the Qur’an.

Who’s to say what is a teaching of the Qur’an is entirely another thing. As Ali-Karamali wrote to me in an e-mail, “The words of the Qur’an are 1,400 years old and have never been altered.”