On Thursday, he held a news conference in Los Angeles with a prominent local Muslim leader to praise NATO bombing attacks in defense of Muslim-sheltering "safe zones" in Bosnia.

In Dallas six days earlier, he announced a national campaign to support a Muslim couple who lost their two young children to state-ordered adoption, and were subsequently baptized as Christians by the foster parents.

On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, as first reports mistakenly discussed Middle Eastern suspects, he helped Muslim leaders in that city write news releases urging caution and expressing dismay. Days later, he organized a meeting in the Oklahoma governor's office--the first-ever between Oklahoma authorities and local Muslims.

For a man only 35--today is his birthday--Salam Al-Marayati of Glendale has built a national reputation as a Muslim activist.

Born in Baghdad but raised in California, Al-Marayati, director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, has become a well-received voice responding rapidly to public misperceptions of Islam and trying to draw fellow Muslims into U.S. mainstream political life.

Although he has benefited from the support and tutelage of Dr. Maher Hathout, chief spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California and president of the multifaith Interreligious Council of Southern California, Al-Marayati also has earned respect for working with other religious and political groups.

Rabbi Harvey Fields of the 2,400-family Wilshire Boulevard Temple praised Al-Marayati's work as co-chair of the Interfaith Coalition to Heal L.A., a post that Fields previously held.

"Like Maher Hathout, Salam presents the views of the Islamic community honestly and forthrightly," Fields said. "But he also has been a voice of reason and moderation--moving to keep partnerships together rather than drive wedges between them, including relations between the Jewish and Muslim communities."

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The Muslim Public Affairs Council is unconventional in challenging Islamic leaders or organizations in America that maintain old-country views of the United States as unfriendly to Muslims and the practice of Islam, said Aslam Abdullah of Los Angeles, one of council's nine board members.

"We challenge the dominant Muslim assumption that the West is always the enemy and against Islam," said Abdullah, who is editor-in-chief of The Minaret, the largest national Muslim magazine, with a circulation of 12,000. "We want to be a part of [American] society rather than take an isolationist approach."