And for US security agencies, such as the FBI, the problem is how do you track suspicious individuals and not alienate the community?

Many Muslims accept — due to recent foiled attacks by American Muslims in their communities — that being watched by authorities is a fact of life.

“The relationship with law enforcement right now is tense,” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told reporters.

“There’s a sense of being under siege in many Muslim communities. People just assume there are agents or informants in their mosques now,” he said.

Katherine Schweit, a spokeswoman at the FBI, told reporters that the FBI does not investigate communities or mosques. “We are going to go within constitutional parameters where we need to go and talk to people we need to talk to,” she said. “But we are not looking to infiltrate anything other than individuals looking to do harm to others.

Since last year, more than 60 US citizens have been charged or convicted in terrorism cases, said federal officials.

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, local mosques and American Muslims have worked to cooperate with authorities.  They hold quarterly meetings with agents to communicate and maintain relationships, and those FBI agents are also the ones Muslim Americans turn to report a hate crime, vandalism and other manifestations of Islamaphobia.

More and more American Muslims are becoming pro-active at building religious understanding.  Last week, for example, dozens of mosques around the US hosted open houses for non-Muslims.

The first national “week of dialogue” was conceived at a summit of US Muslim leaders last month following the attack of a Muslim taxi driver in New York City, the controversy over an Islamic center and mosque in Manhattan, and the threat by a Florida pastor to burn Qur’ans.

In New York, some 20 mosques held the open houses, Zaheer Uddin, Executive Director of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, told reporters.

Two Manhattan churches, a synagogue and a mosque also held an inter-faith service last Sunday attended by more than 300 people, Uddin said.

The open houses include question-and-answer sessions, mosque tours and often visitors watching the start or finish of a prayer service, Uddin said. Seminars might also be held where scholars "focus on the commonalties between Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

For many, the visit has been their first time at a mosque, Uddin said, and "some are shocked to know that a Muslim could not be a Muslim until he/she believes in Jesus, Moses and Jacob."

Mosques in dozens of cities across California, Texas, Illinois and several other states also joined in.

"It is not an uphill battle at all to explain the teachings of Islam or understand the teachings of Islam if people come with an open mind," Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California told reporters.

And Syed stressed that the open houses, which average 200 guests of various faith groups, are about much more than fighting hatred. "It's not only to battle and dispel myths and fallacies," he said, "but also to provide objective information about Muslims and Islam, provide a forum for building relationships and exploring the idea of working together for greater good."

The Obama Administration remains keenly aware of the polarization of Islam in the US.

President Barack Obama's envoy to the Muslim world said over the weekend that there is a "disturbing rise in anti-Islamic sentiment" that may be caused in part by the poor economy.

"The things you can say about Islam you can't say about any other faith," Rashad Hussain, Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said.  “During tough economic times, groups that are seen to be the other...  the scapegoating can increase."

Hussain, who travels the world on behalf of the US government to improve outreach to the Muslim world, told reporters he’s concerned about the increasing vitriol directed at Muslims.

One challenge for Muslim-Americans, said Hussain, is that "Muslims are still seen as an aggressor" because of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, the Times Square bomber, and Farooque Ahmed.

One challenge is the Internet, where young Muslims are enticed to become terrorists, he said. Hussain also attacked ethnic divisions among Muslim-Americans.

Hussain recited in Arabic a verse from the Qur’an, which says killing one innocent life is like killing all of humanity. He said that Islamic scholars all agree that terrorism is against their faith, but "we continue to lose people to this ideology" of extremism.