A Clash of Culture, Faith

"For me, the perfect niche was the Muslim community, because for us it doesn't matter where you are from or what you look like," said Ellis, 44.

She is now called Farhahnaz Ellis.

In public, her Latino identity, like those of most converts, is often invisible. Ellis remembers the day in a bodega in Reston when she overheard two women looking at her Islamic garment and speaking aloud in Spanish: "Oh my God, look at her. She's crazy. It's so hot."

Ellis, who is tall and slender, walked up and broke out in Spanish. The startled women quickly headed out the door.

Religious Curiosity

When the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks occurred, Avelar, then a George Mason University student, was dating a Pakistani American Muslim. One day, she angrily asked him: How could Muslims commit such acts? Yet she also grew curious. When her anger died down, she asked him to tell her about Islam. After they broke up, her interest continued.

"I absolutely had no intention of converting," Avelar recalled. "Even though I felt Islam was inside my heart, I didn't want to admit it to myself."

She was thinking about her father.

On the night of her senior class photography exhibition, Avelar's family and friends sat in the audience. Here, a photo of Avelar wearing a necklace with a cross, only dangling from her back. There, a photo of Jesus on his cross, only his face was smeared.

Millie Jimenez, 31, who grew up with Avelar, caught on. "It symbolized that she was turning her back on Catholicism," she recalled.

Avelar wanted her father to understand this. But on that night, his children said, he felt something else for his only daughter. (He declined a request to be interviewed.)

"He seemed proud that she had an art show," said Selwyn Avelar, 25, her brother.

Two weeks later, she converted.