REMONT, Calif., Oct. 2 — No fewer than five F.B.I. agents gathered around Agha Saeed after he drove from Washington and checked in for one of the first flights allowed to leave Baltimore following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"It was a Kafkaesque moment," said Dr. Saeed, the unflappable national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, the main organization devoted to the political assimilation of the nation's seven million Arab-Americans.
At the airport gate, he practiced the forbearance he has been preaching lately to his constituents alarmed at all the investigative attention American Muslims have been garnering.
"The agents asked me why I had been in Washington and I told them: to see the president of the United States," he recalled, a model of patience here, too, as he handles preparations for the alliance's approaching convention of 500 Muslim leaders from across America.
"I give the lead F.B.I. agent full credit," Dr. Saeed said. "He looked totally surprised and studied me intently to see if I'm real. But he did his job and soon believed me."
Dr. Saeed was allowed to proceed "like any other American" after a document check and the verification that a White House meeting of President Bush and American Muslim leaders was indeed scheduled for Sept. 11 but aborted because of the attacks.
"We were set to meet the president at 3 p.m., but hell broke loose," said Dr. Saeed, a 53-year-old political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley and at Cal Tech. "We were stunned, grief stricken, confused, trying to get some sense of direction and harmony, just like other Americans."
The search for direction will continue in earnest at the Muslim alliance's national conference on Oct. 13 in San Jose, Calif., where Dr. Saeed has amended the agenda to include a new topic in the spirit of one of his favorite poets, Walt Whitman — "Dream on, America: Dignity in the face of adversity."
Irony is the last thing intended by his call to dream on.
"We are calling on the higher aspect of the American dream," said Dr. Saeed, who became an American citizen in 1982 after leaving his native Pakistan in protest of government oppression. "There is a mystical Punjabi couplet about when a fruit is squeezed and juices separate from the essence."
So does adversity now press upon all Americans, challenging each "to retain his or her best qualities," Dr. Saeed cautions.
He speaks passionately of the need for tolerance on the part of both Arab-Americans hard pressed by outsiders' suspicions and their neighbors alarmed by treachery perversely inflicted in the name of Allah. As he consults alliance members, including 153 Arab-American politicians in state legislatures and on school boards, Dr. Saeed notices progress.
For one thing, Arab-American institutions are flooded with requests for speakers for various civic and religious audiences, he said.
"And law enforcement agencies want a clearer understanding of the sociology of Islam in America, who we are, how we live," Dr. Saeed said, finding this encouraging for the openness and respect from inquiring authorities. "We're willing to cooperate not as informants, but to help all Americans understand who we are."
Right now, Professor Saeed's graduate seminar on diaspora, transnationality and citizenship is debating the government's methods in searching out terrorists.
"Most relevant is this question of new laws coming up," he said. "The whole issue of citizenship is being negotiated."
Dr. Saeed is characteristically demanding that the government — his government, he proudly emphasizes — investigate precisely "who created this category called the Afghan Arab?" In particular, he feels all Americans are entitled to know about the Central Intelligence Agency's past operations in Afghanistan.
"I was never under the illusion there would be no problems in America," said Dr. Saeed, noting he was "morally obliged" to dissent vociferously when he deemed his government wrong, as in the Persian Gulf war. "But I am also morally obliged to say if I spoke up that way in Iraq, I would have been killed in 30 seconds."
With alliance members from 22 Muslim nations, Dr. Saeed said the ongoing task of assimilation remained "how to understand ourselves in America as Muslims." The tragedy of Sept. 11 has not made that any easier. "People are still bewildered," he said.