It’s a snowy Sunday afternoon in January and about 40 Baptists are gathered in a back room at their church in Lamoine.

They’re on hand to learn about Islam, a faith that, like theirs, traces its spiritual genealogy to Abraham and is growing at such a clip that it is considered the world’s fastest-growing religion.

Inside the Lamoine Baptist Church, Mahmoud El-Begearmi, 58, of Bangor is seated in front of a semicircle of chairs, prepared to spend the afternoon explaining his faith to members of the Hancock County congregation. It’s a faith that has come under fire – some would say literally – in recent months.

Every weekend since Sept. 11, El-Begearmi has been traveling the state, explaining how Muslims, Jews and Christians all trace their roots to Abraham, father of Isaac and Ishmael, and telling those who are bold enough to ask that, no, he does not believe Osama bin Laden is correctly interpreting the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

It’s a mission to which El-Begearmi, a Cooperative Extension professor at the University of Maine, has dedicated himself since the terrorist attacks focused Americans’ attention on Islam.

Instead of accepting a fee for speaking at the church, El-Begearmi agrees to let the pastor circulate a basket for donations. The money will go toward the effort by UM students and others to establish a mosque in Orono.

“Islam is one of the least-known religions” in the United States, even though there are 1.6 billion adherents around the world, El-Begearmi tells the group in Lamoine.

When Americans think of Muslims, they are likely to picture someone of Arabic descent, he says – yet the majority of Muslims are Asian.

While most of the questions he hears in Lamoine are couched in sympathy for the plight of a practicing Muslim, one man challenges him with quotations from the Quran that seem to prescribe violence against unbelievers.

El-Begearmi grows more animated – in contrast to the soft-spoken demeanor he has demonstrated for the previous hour – as he answers the man, arguing that the quotations are out of context. When the man refuses to abandon his position, El-Begearmi seems to struggle to contain his irritation.

It’s the same quiet intensity he displays in the privacy of his office at the University of Maine, where he is a nutrition and food safety specialist and frequent speaker on such quintessential American topics as proper cooking of a Thanksgiving turkey.

Living, working and rearing a family in Maine has not always been easy, El-Begearmi confessed in an interview in late January in his Orono office. Yet it is in Maine that he chooses to stay, because by and large, the people here are kind and tolerant, he said.

Being in a minority based on national origin and religious reasons is not new to El-Begearmi, but it’s still not easy, he said.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, El-Begearmi earned two agricultural degrees there, then decided to come to the United States to study further. For a year, he worked in Wisconsin to establish residency, then attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a graduate student, where he earned a master’s degree in poultry nutrition, then a doctorate in nutritional science.

While in secondary school in Egypt, El-Begearmi studied French and English. But language proved to be a barrier for him in those first years in the states. “I knew some, but it wasn’t enough to deal with, conversationwise,” he recalled.

Living in a foreign land without any family was also a challenge.

“It was hard,” he said. “There’s no question about that, but I was determined to do it.”

In a few years, he met a woman who had come to the United States to join her sister and brother-in-law. Terry El-Begearmi is a Palestinian who was reared in Jerusalem. They married in 1974.

After two years on the staff at Cornell University, El-Begearmi moved to Maine in 1981. He and Terry have three children, now in their early 20s.

Even after language barriers were removed, El-Begearmi said, he has suffered from discrimination, before and after Sept. 11. “What softened the blow quite a bit was the academic environment,” where he believes people are more tolerant of differences in culture.

When he arrived in Maine, El-Begearmi found it difficult to find other Muslims with whom to pray on Fridays, which is a day of prayer and the start of the Muslim sabbath. “So I had to do it myself,” he said, calling other Muslims in the area to arrange for a weekly gathering. “The university was very helpful in letting us use the chapel.”

His faith has been a central part of his life since he was young, El-Begearmi said.

“I grew up within a Muslim practicing family,” he said. One of the two postsecondary schools he attended in Egypt was Islamic-based, “so I had some exposure to that as a young person.”

El-Begearmi said the basics of his faith tend to mark clearly those who are devout and those who claim the religion as a cultural heritage only.

“If you practice, you pray five times a day,” El-Begearmi said. “You’re either practicing or you’re not.”

And for practicing Muslims in the United States, Sept. 11 changed life dramatically.

On the morning of the attacks, his 21-year-old daughter, who attends UMaine and holds a job on campus, was told by her co-workers to go home. When El-Begearmi told this story to the church group in Lamoine, he added, in a deadpan: “And her name is Mandy” – which drew a sympathetic laugh.

While Mandy’s co-workers later said they were concerned about her safety, El-Begearmi remains skeptical.

The key to changing negative perceptions about Muslims, or any other group, El-Begearmi believes, is exposing Americans to different cultures. He cites early visits to his in-laws in Jerusalem, which exposed him, an Egyptian, to Palestinian culture, which is distinct.

He said the attitudes toward Arab Muslims in the United States are not unlike those held toward Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.

“The same effect is there, because you found yourself obligated to restrict your movement, be careful what you say,” even though there are 7 million Arab-Americans, he said. “This is something I will have to deal with for a long time.”

He holds strong political views about U.S. involvement around the world, believing foreign policy has not been evenhanded in the Middle East – unilateral support for Israel, despite evidence of terrorism on the part of that country’s government – or elsewhere.

He makes no apologies for his political views. “I tell the Muslim students that this is part of what this country is all about,” he said.

And El-Begearmi doesn’t believe bin Laden has any claim to acting in the name of Islam.

“I know that, not only by heart as a Muslim, but by knowledge,” he said. “I could reference many parts of the Quran that refute what he puts forward. Nothing appalls me as much as when people say Islam is a violent religion.”

Such misconceptions are what keep El-Begearmi traveling around Maine every weekend, talking about his faith.

“That’s why I made that promise to myself,” he said.