Growing up as a Muslim female in America, life was not always as sweet as apple pie for me.

In Head Start and kindergarten, making friends was easy. No one really cared what you looked like or what religion you were as long as you were quick enough to twirl the merry-go-round or play tag on the playground.

As I got older, though, I realized I was different. I constantly heard my classmates talking about church and Jesus, things I never heard around my house.

My family went to the mosque and read the Quran. We fasted during Ramadan and prayed five times a day. I didn’t date, and I didn’t attend sleepovers or parties. The prevalent language in my house wasn’t English, but Arabic, and Friday was our equivalent to the Christian Sunday. We didn’t celebrate Easter or Christmas or any other holiday except the Islamic holiday, Eid, which is twice a year. We also focused on the five pillars of Islam: prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage and Shahadah, or confession of faith.

I told this to one of my fifth-grade friends one day, and the first thing she did was invite me to attend church with her the next Sunday so I could see “how wrong my religion was.” Here I was, only 11 years old, and I encountered my first taste of how Islam is misunderstood and disdained in the views of many Americans.

Five years later, I saw more and more of those views surface. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in the school library, and I watched as the second hijacked plane hit the towers. I remember the librarian giving me a hug, with tears in her eyes.

I suddenly had many people asking me questions about Islam.

Occasionally, I got a few hateful comments or one of my friends would say their parents did not want us to be friends anymore, but for the most part, people were just confused and wanted answers.

Many of those questions were about Islam in general: What was the main difference between Islam and Christianity? Why didn’t I wear a hijab, or head scarf? I always explained it to them carefully, and they left knowing more about a religion they were once oblivious about.

One time at school, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, a fellow Muslim walked to the parking lot to leave school only to find his car egged and his tires slashed. Now, there isn’t a big Muslim population in Oxford, Miss. — a town of only 12,000 — but about seven or eight other Muslim teenagers attended my high school. The next day, we all wrote a letter to the school paper. We wanted people to know that what one particular group does is not a reflection of the whole religion.

Every religion has its extremists. I’m not saying I think terrorism is right — because I don’t — but it also should not affect the way the rest of the religion’s followers are treated.

In the years following the terrorist attacks some Muslims in America have been subjected to hostility, but that has not been the case for me. When I do receive hurtful messages or people trying to convert me, I always just smile. I know who I am, and I know enough about my religion to ignore these people’s ignorance. My religion says that you should let people believe in what they believe. Trying to change their beliefs is wrong.

I don’t go around preaching my religion to my friends, but they know what I believe in and they accept me. When I go out with them, I pay attention to the food I eat. I check everything I order to make sure there is no bacon, ham or anything made of pork. When a few of them started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, I never even thought of joining in. Through my religion, I was raised to believe those things are damaging, and I never messed with them. I haven’t tasted a drop of liquor in my life.

I don’t wear a hijab; that is a very important decision that every Muslim female must make for herself. Some countries in the Middle East have strict governments that require their women to wear the hijab in public, but that is not true Islam, and not all nations are run like that. I was born in Sudan, but I grew up in America. I have never had to deal with rigid hijab regulations, so I was always free to make my own decision. That is true Islam.

Now, my life is headed in a good direction. I just graduated from high school, where I was editor of my school paper. I made good grades, participated in many extracurricular activities and even got a nice scholarship for college. I’m just like any “normal” teenager. I just happen to be Muslim, too.