"It is a very practical religion," Ismail said. "It is an easy religion to practice, if you understand it. The fasting, the abstaining from physical pleasures is very natural to Muslims."

The fasting takes place during the month-long celebration of Ramadan, the fourth of five pillars of faith on which Islam is based. From sunrise to sunset, Muslims refrain from eating food. "You fast for health, and for seeing what it is like to be hungry. You cannot forget the poor; you fast so that you can empathize with the poor," Ismail explained.

This notion of empathy is a strong one in Islam. It is a small part of the sense of unity that Muslims feel. For the first pillar, Muslims must profess their faith. They must proclaim Shahada, which "means to affirm, to confess, not verbally, but right here in the heart, to the oneness and unity of God and his prophets, Muhammad being his last prophet," Ismail said.

Muslims must reaffirm this faith five times a day, by cleaning themselves, then kneeling and praying toward Mecca. "Now people say, why Mecca? Again, it's the idea of unity. When you have over a billion people facing one direction, there is a sense that we are not alone," Ismail said.

These images conflict with the images that we see daily on television, images that are, more often than not, negative. In Iraq, we see images of a defiant Saddam Hussein wanting to manufacture chemical weapons. In Beirut and Israel, we watch bloodshed and billowing smoke from bombs set off by Muslim terrorists. In Egypt, we saw Islamic fundamentalists gun down Anwar Sadat. And in Afghanistan, we see women shrouded from head to toe, forced to stay in doors, and forced away from their careers.

Wasti said, "I think what [the American public] does know is clouded by what the media tells them they should know. And it is maybe not the pure view of Islam. [The media] sees a political happening in an Islamic country and they automatically link the two together when they could be worlds apart."

Her classmate, Faraz Syed, agreed. "It always seems to be a double standard. Even if [a Muslim] did play a part, the media makes sure to mention the terrorist is a Muslim. They never mention the religions of the other terrorists," Syed said.

So why is that? Why are Muslims pointed out as being so different from those who practice other major western religions?