First came the thunderous explosion that rocked the World Trade Center in New York.

Within days, the arrests of Arab immigrants and a naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent made news around the world.

"Muslim Arrested!" screamed a headline in an Eastern newspaper.

Muslims in the United States had seen it before. The words and images ran together like watercolors on a child's easel-- Arabs, mosque, terrorism, Muslims, extremists --making it hard to tell where one began and another left off. The result, they said, was a blur of fear and misunderstanding of them and their faith.

For millions of Muslim Americans, the picture not only has distorted the obvious (all Muslims are neither terrorists nor Arabs) but also has failed to convey a central fact of Muslim life in the United States today:

A torch is being passed to a new generation that is middle-class and politically savvy, with concerns that are as representative of America as an Aaron Copland suite.

To be sure, the members of this generation are concerned with the plight of Muslims in Bosnia. They dream as fervently of a Palestinian homeland as did Jews of the establishment of Israel before 1949. They agonize over the murderous religious clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India.

But Muslim Americans also worry about crime in the streets, the quality of education and jobs. They talk about taxes and the economy.

"Muslims in America are 6 million people," said Maher Hathout, chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California. "The majority of them are breadwinners. They are hard-working, taxpaying, law-abiding people."

The first generation of Muslims, like other immigrants, concentrated on building a life in America--sometimes in the face of negative stereotypes about Muslims. Now, those in the second generation--at home with American social and political norms and proud of their heritage--are entering the political and cultural life of the nation.

"The (Muslim) community is maturing, and the second generation is here," said Zahid Bukhari, secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America, based in Jamaica, N.Y. "Now they feel they are mature enough financially and to some extent (in) human resources that we should be a part of the American mainstream and become politically active."