American Muslims whose family has lived here for generations, how do you feel about the western perception of Islam?

Islam in the west is as old as America itself, it's estimated 20% of the slaves forced here were Muslim, however Islam was surpressed and this number went down. Fast forward and Islam is still here as a minority, and there's a lot of Muslims communities that have been here for many many years. But as soon as the west turned it's attention to iran, Palestine, iraq, and Afghanistan then islam all of sudden turned into a foreign threat buried under disinformation and orientalism despite there being many Muslims in America. There's warith deen muhammad, malcom x, yusuf islam, and muhammad ali just to name a few. However it seems that people decided to ignore their Muslim neighbors and just decided that Islam is some exotic foreign threat. I myself am the kid of refugees so I am split between the two and don't know what American Muslim culture or history is like. It seems weird because I would think that Islam would be seen as a primarily black religion in America (as it was in the 90s) but instead people think of some Arab guy riding a camel and shooting AKs. I guess that's what decades of focus on the middle east does.

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