The Tagouris of La Plata, a small town in southern Maryland near Washington, D.C., are in many ways a typical American family. Father is a pathologist at the local hospital and serves as deputy medical examiner for Charles County. Mother is pursuing a Master's degree in counseling at Loyola College of Baltimore and hopes to become a licensed therapist in a school or in private practice. Like most suburban parents, they spend a lot of time on the road, ferrying their three children, ages 8, 5, and 3, to school and to dance classes, gymnastics, and Girl Scouts.

The Tagouris are also devout Muslims, and their faith is central to their busy lives. Despite his fast-paced job at the hospital, Dr. Yahia Tagouri drives to a nearby mosque at least once a day to make prayers, sometimes taking the children with him. For the other daily prayers, he retreats to his office. Most of his co-workers are non-Muslims, he says, but "when people see that my door is closed, they know it is prayer time, and they respect that." His wife, Salwa Omeish, who commutes about 180 miles round-trip to attend college classes, prays at home before and after school.

How They Met and Married

Yahia, 41, grew up in Libya and attended medical school there. In 1987 he decided to join his brother in the United States, and he completed his specialty training at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh and at Marshall University in West Virginia.

Introduced by friends, Yahia and Salwa, now 31, were married in 1992 and lived in West Virginia for a year before moving to Birmingham, Alabama, where Yahia completed a fellowship at the University of Alabama. There followed a year in Selma, Alabama, a town of 20,000 that was on the front lines of the civil rights movement for African-Americans in the 1960s. In 1996, the Tagouris moved north to be closer to Salwa's family, but instead of settling near Washington, D.C., they chose La Plata, Maryland, population 6,500, 40 miles to the south. They built a house in a quiet, upscale neighborhood several miles outside of town. Today their large, modern home is surrounded by trees and a spacious yard full of children's toys and play sets.

Salwa, also born in Libya, came to the United States at age 11 when her father took a job with the World Bank in Washington, D.C. She grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where she attended public secondary school and college.

Remembering those days, she says that not being allowed to date or go to dances and parties like most of her classmates did not particularly bother her at the time. Growing up in a large metropolitan area, she had many Muslim friends in her school. "Not only were we not allowed to do some things," she says, "I don't think we had any interest."

Like many young married American women, Salwa has kept her own last name -- Omeish -- instead of taking her husband's name after marriage. And like countless women, she carefully balances her own desire to further her education with caring for her family, which now includes Yahia's parents and a niece. But despite her professional aspirations, she declares that "family definitely comes first."

Deciding to Wear the Hijab

Unlike many Muslim girls in the United States today, who wear the hijab in high school, Salwa did not cover until several years ago. Wearing the hijab "was something in the back of my mind that I wanted to do," she says. The main reason I wear it now is because God asks us to do it. It's a form of submission to God and not submitting to what society says we should look like."

Though much of the family's social life revolves around their mosque, the Tagouris count many non-Muslims among their friends and acquaintances. To their knowledge, they and their next-door neighbors, an orthopedic surgeon and his family, are the only Muslims in their immediate neighborhood. Among the 80 or so students in her classes at Loyola College, Salwa is the only Muslim.

Daughters Noor, a fourth-grader, and Yuser, just starting kindergarten, attended Christian preschools and now go to a public elementary school where virtually all the students are non-Muslim. There is no objection from teachers or school administrators when the girls stay home from school on Muslim holidays. And Noor's teacher welcomed Salwa into the classroom to decorate a "Happy Eid" bulletin board in observance of the Muslim holiday, which for the past several years has fallen around the same time as Christmas.

Although most of her children's young classmates now seem oblivious to religious differences, Salwa acknowledges that it may be more difficult for her children during the teenage years than it was for her growing up in the Washington area. "We do worry, but we're strong in our faith," she says. "When we see differences, it doesn't bother us. We say, 'O.K., we don't do that and it's fine.'"

Because the local mosque, with only about 40 families, is too small to support religious classes, the Tagouri children spend the weekend with their grandparents or carpool with friends an hour in order to attend Islamic classes in northern Virginia. Noor, who at age 8 is learning to make her daily prayers, also receives religious instruction from a neighbor once or twice a week.

Will Noor and Yuser wear the hijab? The Tagouris stress that it will be strictly their daughters' decision. "You cannot force these things," Salwa says. "I could force them to put it on here, and they could go to school and take it off. We teach them that whatever they do in front of us or behind our backs, God is watching." "Once you teach them to see God in everything they do and keep God in their hearts, then their faith will be strong, and they will want to obey God and his orders, whether it's praying, fasting, giving charity, or doing a good job in their work," adds Yahia. "And if they get to that point they will probably want to wear the hijab."

Teaching Islam by Example

Even though the Tagouris have spent their married life so far in less cosmopolitan areas of the United States, they say they have not been targets of religious intolerance. They believe strongly in spreading the message of their faith through example. "I don't talk about Islam that much," Yahia says, "but I try to show people what Islam should be by the way I live my life. Once they start to know me, they respect me for the man I am."

Even after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Tagouris say they personally felt no animosity from their fellow Americans. "In our community at least, it was the opposite," Yahia says. "People were very caring, asking if we were O.K. and if anyone had bothered us." Salwa, who started the fall semester at college two days after the attacks, was struck by the concern of her classmates. "They asked how I was doing and said they felt bad for all the Middle Easterners who are being looked at differently."

What does anger the Tagouris, however, is the frequent use of phrases like "Muslim militant" and "Muslim terrorist" in the media. Salwa points out that there have been native-born American terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168, or the so-called Unabomber, who was responsible for a series of mail bombings. The press, she says, does not refer to these politically motivated murderers as a "Christian militant" or a "Christian bomber."

"To see Islam portrayed like this is hurtful," she says. "Islam comes from the word for peace. When we come into the house, instead of saying 'Hi' to each other, we say 'Peace be upon you.' Islam is all about peace, but too many people don't get that."

Although the men who bombed the World Trade Center may have done it in the name of religion, the Tagouris say, they obviously did not have God in their hearts. "A terrorist is a terrorist, without regard to what he believes in," Yahia maintains. "We should not link such acts with religion."

The couple cautions Muslims elsewhere in the world that what they read and hear about America also may not be an accurate portrayal of the American people or what it means to be Muslim in America. "There are a lot of Muslims in the U.S.," says Salwa. "Islam is the fastest growing religion in this country, and there are many converts. Our mosque in Birmingham was about 80 percent blond, blue-eyed Americans. I never saw anything like it."

Most importantly, she adds, "we can practice our religion more freely here than probably anywhere else in the world." "In America, if you work hard you are rewarded accordingly," Yahia says. "It is a blessing to be in a country where there is freedom of expression, justice, and the Constitution is applied to everyone. We feel truly blessed to be living in America."