JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Three years ago, when Aly Hassan left his native Alexandria, Egypt, he was like millions of other immigrants who have come to the United States down through the years. Eager to better himself, Hassan expected to build a bright new life in a land that he thought would be a lot like the images he saw on the television show "Knots Landing."

Like other immigrants, he soon found that the reality of life in America did not match his vision. The skyscrapers of Manhattan, glimmering just across the Hudson River, seemed tantalizingly close. But they might as well be on the moon for Hassan, who struggles to support himself by husbanding the $3,000 he brought with him and scratch for odd jobs in this grimy working-class industrial city.

Yet Hassan feels a special sense of alienation and anger that goes beyond the disillusionment and travail that have been the lot of countless generations of immigrants. As a Muslim from the Middle East, he believes that he and others like him are unfairly stigmatized by a society that knows little about them and--when it notices them at all--tends to view them as potential enemies.

"A lot of people do not like Arabs here," observed Hassan, who says that he had a "good job" as a bookkeeper in Egypt and, until he hurt his knee, played forward on the national soccer team. "They think we're all terrorists. Just because there are some bad people who are Muslims, it doesn't mean all Muslims are bad. There are some bad Christians, too, but no one thinks that means all Christians are bad."

These feelings are especially intense in Hassan's case because he went to the same mosque and had many of the same friends as Mohammed A. Salameh, 25, the first suspect arrested in the World Trade Center explosion. Salameh's friends say that he, too, became embittered by his experiences in this country.

Set apart from the mainstream by differences of language, culture and religion, handicapped by difficulties in the job market and shocked by what they see as bias and lack of even-handedness in America's attitude toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East often turn inward in search of companionship and support.

And increasingly that brings them into contact with the uncompromising fundamentalism that is sweeping through mosques and Muslim communities almost everywhere in the world.