Muslim is envoy for her religion

The knock came on the door shortly after the cover blew off the sign for the Iqra Academy of Utah — the state's only Muslim school.

When Maysa Kergaye opened the door, a middle-aged man confronted her, his eyes flashing in anger. "You guys are behind Sept. 11th; it's all your fault," he said, motioning to the sign. "What are you doing in my neighborhood?"

The man eventually calmed down and took Maysa up on her offer to tour the school, but his outburst was exactly why the sign had been covered in the first place. After terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, Maysa knew there would be those who assumed that Islam was a religion of violence.

"The big question I got after Sept. 11 from (non-Muslim) kids was, 'Do you know Osama bin Laden?' " says Maysa, 31, who was principal of the Iqra school and now runs the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Utah. "I knew we had a lot of work to do."

Almost three years later, Maysa is still answering similar questions from children — and adults — who haven't met many members of the Muslim faith.

"No matter how off-the-wall the questions are, I don't mind," she says, over a Free Lunch of seafood and salad at Salt Lake City's Red Lobster. "I look forward to discussions. It's important that people know what we're really all about."

Too many Americans have bought into the Hollywood stereotype of the Muslim terrorist who kills in the name of God and has a harem of wives, says Maysa. News clips from the war in Iraq haven't helped matters much, "because you don't see a fair representation in the media," she says.

Since Sept. 11, she has spent countless hours clearing up fallacies one person at a time.

Dynamic and incisive, Maysa has never been one to sit on the sidelines. Growing up in Southern California, she was the first female Muslim student at her high school to wear a hijab — a traditional scarf headdress.

"Some of the boys kept trying to pull it off," says Maysa, smiling. "That's high school for you. I find in Utah that people are a lot nicer. They seem more respectful."

That's one reason why she is willing to stand before groups of strangers and answer their questions. No, she explains to grade-schoolers, she doesn't wear her headdress around the clock. She only wears it in the presence of men who are not immediate family members.