While Montana is far from the headlines about the so-called "ground zero mosque" or a pastor's plan to burn the Quran, it's not immune from America's anxiety over Islam.

For many Montanans, Islamic culture is defined more by what they see on TV, the movies or the news, and less by personal relationships with Muslim people.

Nationwide, a recent Gallup poll found 43 percent of Americans admitted to feeling at least "a little" prejudice against Muslims. And just this month, another study found Americans have increasingly negative views of a woman wearing a hijab, a traditional Muslim headscarf.

That study, by HCD research, found the number of Americans who would rather women with the headscarves live in another city or even another country, increased by 9 percent in the past year to 38 percent, compared to 29 percent in 2009.

Even so, Muslim Americans are largely assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world. The estimated 2.4 million Muslims living in America are "solidly middle class and mainstream, with incomes and education levels mirroring the general public," the Christian Science Monitor reported in September, citing a Pew Research Center survey.

So, who are the Muslims living in Bozeman?

They're aspiring doctors born and raised here. They're Iraq war veterans who hope to again serve their country. They're young women experiencing a new independence.

They're hopeful and they're happy to be here.

Here are a few of their stories.

RAIMA AMIN

Raima Amin began wearing a hijab on her first day of class at Bozeman's Sacajawea Middle School.

"It was a personal decision, unlike what many people think," she recalled, perched on a stool in the sun in the cafeteria at Montana State University's Strand Union Building. "I wasn't forced to."

The night before her first day of middle school, she picked out a light gray, cotton hijab - one that matched her outfit. She modeled it for her mom to make sure it looked just right.

When she got to school, she heard her classmates whispering. She couldn't tell what they were saying, but she knew it was about her.

"Then, this one girl came up and said ‘Oh, I love your scarf,'" Amin said. "That just made my day. After that it made it a lot easier."

Amin, 20, was born and raised in Bozeman. Her parents moved to Montana from Bangladesh, where most of her extended family still lives. Her dad is a mechanical engineering professor at Montana State University. Her mom is a lab coordinator in the university chemistry department. She has an older sister who lives in Seattle. Both her mother and sister wear a hijab.

Sitting among the students in the SUB recently, Amin wore an ivory hijab with a jeweled pin on one side.

"I wear it because God asked women to dress modestly," she said. "It forces others to judge us by our inner personality rather than our looks."

Amin hopes to become a doctor. She graduated from MSU last year with degrees in cell biology and neuroscience and is applying to medical schools.

She lives with her parents in southeast Bozeman, works at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital as a phlebotomist and volunteers for nonprofit organizations doing work in Kenya and Bangladesh. She likes to read, cook and run.

"I've found Bozeman actually to be a very welcoming community," she said. "More than anything, I encounter a lot of ignorance."

For example, once, a woman told Amin she thought Islam was a country. Another time, during Ramadan, a holy month when Muslims fast, people wondered why she wasn't eating.

"I explained that it's to teach us self-discipline and remind us of the poor people around the world," Amin said. "By forcing ourselves to feel that kind of hunger ourselves, we're more inclined to donate to those in need."

Living in Montana, Amin said, has made her faith stronger.

"Here, there is no mosque. There is no call for prayer," she said. "So, if you do choose to pray, you really have to want to do it. You really have to understand your faith."

ABDULLAH "ROCKY" YASSIN

Abdullah "Rocky" Yassin, 29, is a former U.S. Air Force staff sergeant. He enlisted at age 17 and served for seven years.

In his first year in the Air Force, during training in Texas, he fell 45 feet from a tower. Eight surgeries and several rods and screws in his back and shoulder later, he was able to walk normally again. He kept serving.

Just after the Iraq war began, Rocky was stationed at Tallil Airbase near Nasiriyah. The base had been heavily damaged during the Gulf War and needed to be rebuilt so American forces could receive supplies and evacuate injured soldiers.

"They reconstructed the runway so our planes could land because our convoys were all getting blown up," Rocky said, sitting outside on the steps in MSU's Centennial Mall. "Only about 30 percent of our convoys were getting through. They were all just getting demolished."

When parts were needed for the reconstruction, Rocky, who speaks fluent Arabic, went into town to find them. Locals threatened him and followed his unit.

"Because I was a Muslim, they considered me as a traitor," Rocky recalled. "But I'm an American."

Back at the base, sometimes his fellow soldiers weren't much different. Some soldiers simply had a "kill them all" mentality, he said. "It was rough because I experienced animosity from both sides."

Rocky's parents fled war-torn Palestine to Puerto Rico in the late 1960s. They later settled in Chicago, where Rocky was born. He has six siblings, including a brother who was a captain in the U.S. Army.

"Many people think that Islam is the same as terrorism and that isn't true," he told an MSU News Service reporter last winter. "In fact, the word Islam means peace."

Rocky first came to Montana when he was stationed at Maelstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls. He has a 5-year-old daughter who still lives there. Now he is studying electrical engineering and computer science at MSU.

Once he graduates from MSU, he wants to work for the U.S. government on solar, wind and other alternative energy initiatives, "so we're not so reliant on foreign oil."

Bozeman also happens to be where he met his wife, Ellen Yassin.

ELLEN YASSIN

Raised Catholic in a small "cornfield community" south of Chicago, Ellen Yassin, 23, started to reject Catholicism as a teenager.

"I felt like religions should be accepting of people that want to practice other religions," she said. "I had been sort of outcast for asking questions, for being curious."

Over time, Ellen said, she connected with Islam because the stories in the Quran seemed more realistic than other religious texts.

"You could have a scientific mind and a religious mind," she said.

She converted to Islam just over a year ago.

Visiting the home of friend of hers, a Muslim woman from Morocco, convinced Ellen to start wearing headscarf.

"When I got to her house, she took her off her scarf," she recalled. "She said, ‘We see our hair as a treasure. It's the treasure of our beauty, so we only give that treasure to our husband. That was such a beautiful idea to me."

Wearing a headscarf over her light skin while she chatted on the MSU campus, she said, "I wanted to know what it felt like to rely on my personality and my word instead of my body language."

Ellen's family supported her choice.

"Seeing the extremely positive changes to my life it was undeniable to them that this was something good for me," she said. "That has made my life as a Muslim convert a thousand times easier - to have the support of my family."

Ellen met Rocky while volunteering at the Muslim Students Association's Fast-A-Thon last winter.

They married in Bozeman in a ceremony with their Muslim friends, then repeated their vows in Chicago in a 500-guest, multi-cultural bash mixing Scottish bagpipers with Arabic music.

"Everyone was just astonished that we mixed all the cultures," Ellen said. "We kind of feel like we break the norm - him being a veteran Arab and me being a Scottish convert."

Ellen is studying nursing at MSU and she works at a nursing home. In Bozeman, where there's a small Muslim community at MSU, she feels very little discrimination. Mostly, people want to ask questions. And she loves to answer.

"Muslims love to answer questions about their religion," she said. "When someone comes up to me and asks me about my headscarf, I always smile and the first thing I say is, ‘I love that question.'"

REEM ALSOBAHI

With a pink stud in her lip, Reem Alsobahi, 23, appears somewhat of a rebel.

She got the piercing after coming to Bozeman.

"Lots of girls have them back in Saudi," she said grinning and brushing back her long black hair.

Every year, the Saudi Arabian government gives 25,000 students scholarships to study in the United States. Alsobahi, of Mecca, is focused on learning English this year, but once she passes the equivalency test next spring she plans to study accounting at MSU. She's one of about 120 Saudis with similar scholarships to study at MSU.

"Bozeman's kind of small - you can find Saudis wherever you go," she said.

She came to MSU in May with her younger brother, who also received a scholarship. The Saudi government requires female students to travel with a male companion. Back home, women rarely mix with men outside of their family.

"Coming here, it's different," she said. "You can be more independent. You can rely on yourself and you will experience a lot."

Alsobahi's upbringing is rooted in Islamic tradition, but her family is well-traveled. Her dad teaches English at an international school. Her mom teaches art and has her own jewelry and abaya business. Abayas are robe-like dresses that women are required by law to don in public in Saudi Arabia.

She has three brothers and four sisters. Her oldest sister is a professor. Another sister works in marketing and one brother manages an IKEA furniture store back home.

The Saudi students here on scholarship aren't required to go back to Saudi Arabia once they've graduated, she said, but she'd like to return. That's where her friends and family are.

But while she's in America, she wants to fit in and experience American ways.

"I think we need to be open-minded and mingle with other people," Alsobahi said. "People will stare at you if they're different from you. I didn't want people to stare at me. I just wanted to mix with everyone."

Alsobahi stopped wearing her abaya while in Bozeman. She still wears long sleeves and skirts or pants that fall below her knees, but she loves DKNY, Ed Hardy and American Eagle clothes.

On the afternoon she was interviewed, she wore a white dress over black pants and a black long-sleeve shirt.

In Bozeman, she's taken her first mountain hikes, cast her first fishing line and plans to experience her first snow.

"Here, people are super friendly," she said. "They'll stop and help you with anything."

Amanda Ricker can be reached at aricker@dailychronicle.com or 582-2628.

© 2012 The Bozeman Daily Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.