It's easy to attribute the backlash against Muslims from the "Ground Zero Mosque" to the election season. In many ways, it's a non-issue. The "Ground Zero Mosque" is neither a mosque nor at ground zero. Park51 is, in fact, an Islamic community center to be built two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood. It would join a strip club and fast food restaurants on that hallowed ground.

It's also easy to attribute the resurging obsession with President Barack Obama's alleged Muslim faith to the election season. Nearly one-fifth of Americans now believe Mr. Obama is Muslim, a claim that the Republican Party has hardly tried to refute. When Fox News pundit Glenn Beck delivered his messianic address on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last week, calling for America to return to God, he spoke with apocalyptic fervor, as if a foreigner had taken up residence in the Oval Office.

Election season or not, however, one thing seems clear.

Today's discussions surrounding Park51 and Mr. Obama's religion have somehow morphed into a vitriolic and crude narrative that paints Islam -- and the 1.6 billion Muslims across the globe who practice the religion -- as the enemy.

We see and hear it at the rallies against the Park51 Islamic center.

We heard it in former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's simplistic comparison that the Islamic center would be like Nazis putting up "a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington."

It is evident in the protests against a mosque in Tennessee, in the fumbled mosque bombing in Jacksonville and in the plans to hold a Sept. 11 Quran-burning rally at a church in Gainesville, Fla., tomorrow.

When people claim Mr. Obama is a Muslim, we rarely hear, "No, he's not, but it wouldn't matter if he was."

In the months following 9/11, I often heard Americans ask why Muslims did not speak out against the terrorist attacks. It's a question I still hear today, one that places a cloud of blame over an entire creed.

The truth is, Muslims from Dearborn to Tehran have condemned 9/11 and virtually every terrorist act committed by someone in the name of Islam ever since. It's just that their condemnations are not as newsworthy as Sarah Palin's latest tweets.

I am just one voice. But I will use it to say that I am a proud young American and that I am also Muslim. I will use it to say that Islam and America do not hold conflicting ideals. Neither one must be compromised to exist together. I can love this country; I can relish its freedoms and celebrate its achievements on my way to Friday prayer.

On that dreadful day in September nine years ago, when the Twin Towers collapsed into a cloud of dust and debris, my high school classmates and I watched television in muted horror. I struggled with the realization that this atrocity was committed in the name of my religion, in the name of Allah. Soon I found myself desperately searching for a label, for a word, to prove that my sadness was just as great, just as overwhelming as everyone else's.

Muslim-American.

I said it to myself over and over again, without realizing it, as if to justify my grief for the victims, for America, for my country. This is my country.

Today, once again, I feel as if I must prove myself. I feel I must reclaim my religion and my dignity. I want to shout it. I want to write it in enormous, bold letters. We are Americans, too. We do not share the violent, hateful and ultimately un-Islamic beliefs of a few. We are not a merciless other, determined to replace the Constitution with Sharia law. We do not fit under the umbrella of Islamic fundamentalism, that heretical aberration of an honorable faith. We are hardworking, peaceful and infinitely diverse.

As our country prepared for war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush assured the American people he stood by Muslims. He said in 2002, "Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion."

President Bush had his faults, but he never hesitated to speak up in support of Muslims. It's worth looking back to see how far we've come since then.

It's not far at all.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.