Strangers occasionally ask Kiran Awan how long she has been in the country.

The answer is all her life.

Because she is a Muslim, the 17-year-old wears a hijab — a scarf that covers her hair, neck and ears — whenever she is in public. Though her style of dress doesn’t inspire a second look from other worshipers at her mosque, it sometimes generates unwanted attention in other public places.

But worse than the suspicious looks, Awan said, is the knowledge that some people don’t see the individual behind the hijab.

“I kind of feel like a sideshow sometimes,” Awan said. “People see our clothes and can’t imagine that we have hobbies and interests and things we want to do with our lives.”

Another Muslim in the Mobile community, 25-year-old Eyad Ayesh, echoed Awan’s concern that stereotypes and ignorance of Muslim culture sometimes cloud the public’s ability to judge Muslims fairly.

“I always wonder what people think of us when they see us,” Ayesh said. “Do they see regular people or the media images of a backward culture?”

Ayesh is not alone in his belief that news coverage, and sometimes even entertainment programming, reinforces unrealistic stereotypes about Muslim culture.

“The majority of the time the news is unfairly negative,” said Dr. Husam Omar, an engineering professor and the faculty sponsor of the Muslim Student Association at the University of South Alabama. “There are 1.4 billion Muslims. If a thousand or so are mean and nasty, they don’t necessarily represent the whole.” Fayad Azzam, a 21-year-old graduate student living in Mobile, also expressed frustration over the tendency of extremist groups to dominate media portrayals of Muslim culture.

“We are not fanatic,” said Azzam. “The media sees 5 percent of Muslims and labels us all that way.” One of the oldest and most common misrepresentations of Muslim culture, Ayesh said, is the depiction of Muslim women as being suppressed and voiceless. Ayesh cited both older examples, such as Barbara Eden’s title role in “I Dream of Jeannie,” and more recent examples, such as that of a Muslim wife frequently shushed by her husband in the 1995 sequel to “Father of the Bride,” as unrealistic depictions of Middle Eastern women who are blindly subservient to men.

Awan said that she experiences the same misconceptions about the treatment of women in Islam. She said she is often asked if anyone forces her to wear the hijab.

“A woman told my friend once, ‘People died so you don’t have to wear that,’” Awan said. “My friend told her, ‘People have died so I can wear it.’”

The decision to wear the hijab, Awan explained, is not a matter of being forced to dress a certain way, but one of personal conviction and preference.

“We don’t worry about being objectified,” Awan said. “We don’t have to dress to please anybody but God.” According to Ayesh, some women, including his mother, prefer to wear the hijab even if their husbands don’t care for it.

“My dad didn’t like the hijab at first,” Ayesh said. “He saw it as backward and old-fashioned. He’d tell her, ‘I don’t want to feel like I’m married to an old lady.’”

Eventually, Ayesh said, his father came around to his mother’s point of view once he understood how important the decision was to her.

Most American Muslims agree, however, that often any tension they experience from strangers results not from simple differences in dress, but from a tendency of some people to associate all Muslims with the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ayesh was in his government class on the morning when a Muslim extremist group crashed two planes into the World Trade Center. A classmate asked him why he did it. Awan said she also experienced a backlash from the events of September 11, more than 1,000 miles away from the place the crash occurred. “Before September 11,” she said, “I never experienced racism in the South.”

But a few days later while she and her mom were walking, a car full of teenagers drove by shouting at them. However, not all Muslims living in Mobile at the time experienced negative reactions. Omar, who was expecting somewhat of a backlash, said neighbors actually stopped by the mosque to make sure everyone was safe. Additionally, he was invited to speak about Islam at various churches, giving him the chance to present audiences with a better understanding of the religion.

But though tensions have eased in the years since the World Trade Center attacks, some local Muslims still occasionally experience discrimination. In these situations, Ayesh said, Muslims often feel a responsibility to act pleasant in order represent Islam well.

“We don’t want to reinforce the bad things others believe,” he said. Awan also described feeling a personal responsibility to show kindness to those who are rude to her. “If someone mistreats Muslims,” she said, “we have to leave them with a better impression than what they already have of us.”

Part of improving negative perceptions, Awan said, is being candid with other people about her beliefs. “If someone has a question,” she said, “we’d rather they ask than go by what they see on Fox News or what they Google.”

Omar explained that most Muslims are equally willing to discuss their religion openly.

“We are not a closed society,” he said. “We welcome anyone to come to the mosque. We are here for everyone, not just Muslims.”