Yesterday, I saw a public service ad by our ever-compassionate culture, urging people not to discriminate against Arab Americans and Muslim women, whom they've shown in the ad wearing a scarf or a veil. My youngest daughter was watching a cartoon and saw young Muslim girls roller skating wearing Islamic scarves. The station obviously wants to teach our kids more compassion, tolerance and diversity.

Of course, I support the idea that no one of Arab or Muslim heritage should be hurt or discriminated against because of the current environment after 9-11. It is the essence of our democracy. After all, I am an American of Arab origin and the safety and security of every American should always be the number one priority of our government. However, I was also compelled to ask myself why would anyone, who believes in Islam as the center of their life and existence, choose to live in a non-Islamic culture?

The West and non-Muslims are considered the infidels, and America is the Great Satan in the eyes of a large number of people in the Middle East. A large number of Muslims have contempt for our culture and find our way of life bad for raising their children, and offensive to live in. You don't have to be a Muslim to realize the negative effects Hollywood and the pop culture have on our society, especially the upbringing of our children.

We are all struggling in America to protect our kids from drugs, sex and violence. Ours is an open society where children after age 18, and frequently under age 18, can do anything they want without the approval of parents. Their daughters and sons are free to reject Islam, have pre-marital sex and mingle with – and even marry – non-Muslims.

So why do these Muslims who want to adhere to strict Muslim dogma choose to leave Muslim countries and come to live with the infidels? They obviously behave as if Islam is the center of their life and existence. I can understand if they choose to live here because of a temporary business assignment or government job such as with an embassy. But why would a Muslim woman who wants to follow Islamic law to the letter, for her and her family, choose to live in the West and the U.S.?

Many Muslims and Arabs would love to live in the United States, the land of opportunity and freedom. Almost all Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. eventually blend in with the population and become loyal American citizens. Most Arab and Muslim Americans who live in the U.S. are good citizens who care about their kids' education, are very family-oriented and love America. They don't advertise being a Muslim through their appearance. Most Arab and Muslim American women do not wear a head cover or a veil and most men do not wear a beard. They follow a moderate form of Islam that has respect for other religions and cultures.

I only started seeing the trend of "looking like a Muslim" become popular among some Muslims in the U.S. around 15 years ago. This trend has Muslims behaving in a way that states "I am different" and "I belong to a group." This coincided with the building of many mosques in the U.S. and throughout the West.

I am not an expert in the Koran, but I do know that Muslims who follow Islam to the letter are urged to befriend one another and stay away from the company of non-Muslims. Extreme forms of Islam consider non-Muslims as something alien, unworthy of befriending but only to be tolerated until they convert to Islam. Islamic attire tells the world, "I am a Muslim who follows Islam to the letter." Muslim clergy or people who work in mosques naturally wear their religious attire, but I am referring to ordinary Muslim women in the U.S. who are walking around looking very different from the general population. The equivalent of this would be catholic women dressing like nuns.

About 13 years ago, an Arab Muslim family, that I personally knew, started changing their appearance after living in the U.S. for 28 years. When they moved to the U.S. they wore ordinary clothes, and I saw them as a kind and decent family. However, instead of continuing to blend with the American population, the wife started wearing the Islamic head scarf and covered her body from head to toe and the husband started wearing a beard. They started attending a local mosque regularly and made their daughters wear scarves at an Islamic school in the U.S.

I did not care, since it is none of my business, and continued our friendship with respect to their choice. After all, this is a free country. However, the woman started preaching Islam every time I met her. She criticized the way I dressed, that I didn't pray, my marriage to an American and almost every aspect of my life! I started feeling very uncomfortable around her and her friends. I felt a sort of a wall between us, communication was impossible and I started avoiding seeing her all together. I felt that her Islamic attire was the first visible indication that she and I could never be friends. Her intent was to preach until I changed. She never gave me the impression that she could continue to be my friend and accept me the way I am. Needless to say, that was the end of the relationship.

When I left the Middle East 23 years ago, most of the middle and upper class in moderate Arab countries wore modest Western clothes. The Egyptian government does not require the extreme Islamic attire for women as the Iranians or Saudis. In fact, they discourage it and don't allow it for diplomat wives. Contrary to popular belief in the United States, very few Muslim countries force women to wear the "burka."

When I visited the Middle East last summer, I was shocked to see almost all ordinary Muslim women covered from head to toe by their own choice, even some young girls. A large number of women chose to cover even the face. That was what one of my cousins did. She is, of all things, a practicing physician! She chose on her own, to wear a burka – her eyes covered with eye-glasses and hands with gloves in August in Egypt, when the temperatures exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

My cousin chose to see me after my American husband went back to the U.S. When I met her, I was very sensitive not to embarrass her with any remark and actually told her if that's what she felt comfortable doing, then let it be. Another woman told my cousin that Islam does not demand covering of the face and my physician cousin assertively answered, "But the wives of Mohammed covered their face." In my mind I thought, "They probably did cover their face because of the sand storms they suffered from living in the open desert in tents!" I, of course, did not say that out loud.

However, again, it was very hard to sustain a relationship in my short visit. She also started preaching and tried to make me feel guilty for not praying or fasting. Regarding my husband, she and others asked me: "He did, of course, convert to Islam?" And, of course, I cowardly said "Yes." They pressed for details on whether we pray five times a day. When I left to come back home to the States, she gave me clothes for Muslim prayer! How can I maintain a relationship like that?

The clothes of Muslim women who choose to wear Islamic attire in the West have a social meaning and purpose. It is for making a particularly strong statement. Each and every Muslim woman I met was trying to convert me to this extreme form of Islam by force to get their blessings and acceptance. However, I did not do the same thing in return. I did exactly what the ad on U.S. television was trying to teach us. I was open to a relationship with mutual respect of our differences, but they did not reciprocate and, instead, they were very militant about it.

I discovered the more tolerant we become, the more we are taken advantage of – thus 9-11. Westerners may believe that all these women are forced to wear burkas by the husbands or governments, but this is simply not the case. In most cases, it is done by choice – especially in the West and in Muslim countries who don't impose it. Fanatical Muslim women try to coerce the more moderate ones into extreme Muslim attire, and a large number abide. Teenage Arab girls are often criticized by no one other than older women who also want them covered from head to toe. Great idea for solving the problem of competition between women!

Islamic attire is often chosen after marriage by many Muslim women for many reasons – some of which have social and economic benefits. It saves time and money on making yourself pretty while, at the same time, you get more social approval and respect. After all, they already have a husband and the competition is eliminated under the burka – not a bad deal in a culture that allows men to marry up to four women. Husbands in that situation have no temptation to pursue more wives. It is not uncommon for Muslim men to have additional wives – some in public, and many in secret.

Women with Muslim attire in the United States create a wall between themselves and the rest of the population and have a mission of spreading Islam. Jihad for men is spreading the word of Allah through war. A Western person seeing a woman in Islamic clothes might consider her doing this against her will. It is the Muslim women's form of jihad – without the violence – but it could be aggressive. Remember some of these women raise their sons to become terrorists and give up their lives to jihad. We should never underestimate the power of women in any culture.

Our Western culture, always quick to assign victimhood to women and aggression to men, finds it easy to have a simplistic view of the Middle East culture. Feminists naively gave themselves a new cause of liberating these poor and oppressed women. I see feminists on U.S. television who think that Muslim women cannot wait to be liberated by them. Feminists can't wait to find a new horizon to conquer for the sake of women of the world. They are eager to go to Afghanistan, hold hands with the Afghan women with a victory sign and maybe "burn their burka"!

To them, a culture is not an integral unit. They divide any culture into men and women as though there is no collaboration and interdependence between the sexes. Western feminists view equality and welfare of women as something separate from their family and the rest of the culture. Only if women become more like their oppressors, the men, could equality truly exist. This is the dilemma of the elite Western popular culture whose arrogance and guilt drive them to save everyone and, in that process, the truth is irrelevant.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and we have an open and free society. We have opened our society without fear or caution of being contaminated by tyranny or evil from some cultures that have no respect for human rights and – our greatest accomplishment – the Constitution of the United States of America.

Muslims have a strong need to spread Islam through jihad and they certainly have the power from oil money to do so. Mosques all over the world are being built and named after various Saudi kings who donated the money for the cause. Muslims in America are using our open system to accomplish their mission in both peaceful and violent jihad. They want to convert as many people to Islam as possible and those who don't convert to the extreme form of Islam are of no use to them.

There is a Muslim woman in the U.S. who is suing because in the airport she was asked to remove the scarf while in the process of being searched! Our legal system allows it and Muslims, as well as many other groups and minorities in the U.S., are just helping themselves to promote their agenda. I wonder how many agendas the United States can survive.

Ms. Darwish, an American of Arab origin, is a writer, former editor and translator.