MECCA, Saudi Arabia - Like all Americans, New Yorker Mariam Faraj was horrified by Sept. 11.
But the 46-year-old convert to Islam said the suicide attacks -- and a backlash against Muslims that followed -- had failed to shake her faith.
Performing the haj pilgrimage to Mecca for the second time in four years, Faraj, who was born in Italy and used to be called Renata Solimine, recounted her shock as she watched events unfold near to her New York home on September 11.
"It was unbelievable," Faraj told Reuters in the Muslim holy city Sunday. "I don't think Muslim people are so cruel."
Friends and neighbors shunned Faraj and her Egyptian-born husband and two children after the hijack attacks were blamed on Islamist militants. But she was determined to uphold her faith.
"I am not going to give up and nor are my children because we know this is the religion of peace," said the New York housewife, her head covered by a pink scarf.
Her beliefs were echoed by other American pilgrims who made the journey from the United States to Saudi Arabia.
South African-born couple Imtiaz and Nazmira Tar, from Los Angeles, said the attacks had made them speak out for Islam among Americans and that in turn had intensified their faith.
"In a way, it made us stronger Muslims because we ourselves had to think...and explain the right views of what Islam is about," said Nazmira Tar.
Shrouded from head to toe in a black dress, Tar said Muslim Americans had suffered a double blow on September 11:
"As an American we've been victimized because our country was attacked on September 11 and we did have friends in the World Trade Center that were killed that day," she said.
"But then again as a Muslim we've also been victimized because now our religion has been attacked. That in a way made us double victims."
PROUD TO BE MUSLIM
Her husband said Americans were slowly realizing that Islam did not condone or encourage the killing of innocent civilians.
He also said that positive remarks by President Bush on Islam had helped to ease some of the strains American Muslims have suffered from in the past five months.
Faraj converted to Islam in 1994, after hearing a Muslim call to prayer for the first time while on a trip to Cairo.
"At that moment I felt someone was taking my heart and lifting it up," she said, fighting back tears.
Islam gave her "a very good feeling" despite the physical and spiritual efforts it demanded.
"I am very proud to be a Muslim," Faraj said at her hotel few meters from Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site.
"I am very proud to be around these people because they are the most wonderful people you can ever know," she said of her fellow pilgrims. "You feel that everybody here are brothers and sisters. There's no difference who's the doctor and who's the housewife. We're all the same."
Nazmira Tar agreed: "It is like having a world tour all in one place. It's amazing."
More than two million pilgrims from 160 countries are expected to perform the five-day ritual beginning on Wednesday.