These kids perfected multiple existences – they were Americans at school, Indians at home, and Muslims at the mosque. And in each setting, they heard a discourse of suspicion about the other spaces. This experience causes more than just confusion; it has the potential to create a profoundly debilitating identity crisis.

Dr. Maher Hathout, a physician who immigrated from Egypt, understood the dangers of these internal conflicts long before most other immigrant Muslims. He set up a mosque in the early 1970s that was intentionally American and that welcomed Muslims from all ethnic backgrounds and from the various schools of Muslim theology.

Many recent immigrants, Muslims included, build houses of worship like bubbles, meant to insulate their community (especially the kids) from the broader culture. Dr. Hathout built the Islamic Center of Southern California like a bridge. It engaged positively and proactively with the broader American society, and is currently a leader in interfaith programs with both Christians and Jews. In 1988, Dr. Hathout decided that the outreach model of the Islamic Center needed to be taken national, and so he and a group of friends formed the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which works largely in public policy, media and youth engagement.

I have been quoting Dr. Hathout for years. One of my favorite lines of his is, “Home is not where your grandparents are buried, it’s where your grandchildren will be raised.” I met him for the first time last weekend at the recent MPAC Convention in Long Beach. At least at first blush, the man lived up to the legend.

I was impressed by his frank talk about both the fact of Islamophobia in America and the reality that Muslim extremism opened the door to the climate of fear and hatred we see today. I was also struck by how an elderly man who walks with a cane connected effortlessly with Muslim teenagers.

Once organizations start engaging with power players in DC, they often forget the importance of nurturing young people. Not MPAC. Working with youth continues to be a central part of what they do. They have one of the best papers I’ve read on the identity challenges that young Muslims in America face. They consulted on the new sitcom Aliens in America, which is about the experiences of a Muslim exchange student from Pakistan in a small town in Wisconsin. And they continue to organize vibrant youth programs, both at their national conventions and in Washington DC.

In fact, some of the most important young Muslim leaders in America cut their teeth at MPAC, including Ahmed Younis, Safiya Ghori, Edina Lekovic, Shahed Amanullah and Nadia Roumani.

This generation of American Muslims is building an American Islam that will have three defining characteristics:

1) It will be a big tent for all believers, not a small room for only the purists; 2) It will seek to contribute to all aspects of human civilization, not obsess exclusively over a handful of causes; and 3) It will be just as concerned about the future of the country we live in as it is about the places of Islam’s glorious past.

As my generation of American Muslims works to construct a coherent and relevant American Muslim identity, we need to remember that people like Maher Hathout pioneered it.