MINNEAPOLIS -- As the FBI pursues one alleged terrorist plot after another, Muslim Americans are grappling with a widespread sense that the government thinks they all could be terrorists.

In dozens of interviews across the country, McClatchy has found that the government's search for the enemy within is threatening to divide and destroy America's Muslim communities.

``It's not a guilty complex; it's the stigma of being a Muslim and constantly having to defend religion,'' said Edina Lekovic, the communications director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. ``It causes people to give up and say, `Why should I bother? No one likes me. Why should I keep trying?' ''

Americans of all faiths support the government's efforts to keep them safe, but the war on terrorism looks different to those who find themselves under constant scrutiny because of their religion, ethnicity or both.

Many American Muslims say the government's hunt for hidden enemies has tainted their mosques, charities and community centers by making them a front line in the war on terrorism. Many think that their mosques are filled with FBI informants because the government is treating their community more as suspect than as citizen and presumes Muslims guilty rather than innocent.

DISCRIMINATION

A recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that more than half of those surveyed thought that American Muslims face widespread discrimination, more than any group other than gays and lesbians. Thirty-six percent of those polled thought that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths do.

``Everybody feels like we are being watched,'' said Foad Farahi, a 34-year-old doctoral student at Florida International University. In 2004, while he was the imam at Masjid Shamsuddin, a mosque in North Miami Beach, government officials first approached him asking him to become a secret informant at the mosque, he said. Farahi refused to do it, and he refused again when asked in 2007, he said.

``The community doesn't trust federal agents these days because they believe they are targeting Muslims,'' Farahi said. ``There is a lack of trust from both sides.''

Farahi's story echoes across the country. Abdi Samatar, a respected geography professor at the University of Minnesota, cannot travel without being interrogated for hours at the airport. A Muslim student at Michigan State University who approached the FBI to build bridges to the Muslim community was asked to spy on the Muslim Student Association. An unemployed Somali electrician has grown so tired of federal investigators and airport personnel treating him like a criminal that he is considering leaving the country that once gave him refuge.

Federal investigators question people in the streets and at the mosques, and park their vehicles nearby to listen to Friday sermons.

Others stop at school bus stops and apartment complexes, residents said. As the distrust has grown, they've coined a nickname -- Fadumo Bashir Ismail -- for the FBI.

``You have a community lodged between two powerful forces,'' said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim in Congress. ``People are luring their sons back to Somalia to fight some war and the government is scrutinizing them, watching them.''

In September, the FBI questioned two women because of their charity work for the poor in Somalia, the women said. One, Amran Shire, was approached at her children's school bus stop just outside Rochester, Minn. Another, Amina Ali, said that when she asked for an attorney, she was asked whether she believed in ``Allah'' or a lawyer.

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