Sixteen years ago, as a 20-year-old who’d just moved out from under his parents’ embrace, I confronted a situation many SF State students know all too well. Living in the upscale suburban enclave of Costa Mesa, California in the late 80s wasn’t cheap, and the $1,000 my father had given me when I left home flew out of my wallet faster than I ever imagined. To put it simply, I needed a job, and I needed it fast if I hoped to eat and keep a roof over my head. My salvation, as it turned out, was in the hands of a leader in the small Muslim community in Orange County, and his name was Seghir Aslam.

When I walked into Mr. Aslam’s fabric store in the Southcoast Plaza mall, I’d never met a Muslim before. Mr. Aslam didn’t know much about me either, but he hired me on the spot for $4.25 an hour anyway. Within a few days, Mr. Aslam had me working in both his store and in his home office and I soon met his wife and his children. I developed a taste for Indian food at Mr. Aslam’s table when his wife refused to let me leave after work without sharing in the family meal.

Over the next several months, I came to know Mr. Aslam and his family fairly well and I learned first hand about their religion. I soon discovered that Mr. Aslam’s true passion wasn’t his successful fabric business but his faith in the teachings of Mohammad and the Islamic school he hoped to build for his masque.

Most days, I pounded away at the keyboard in Mr. Aslam’s office as he dictated letters hitting up nearly every friend and business associate he knew for a donation to the school. The first time I ever held a check for a $1 million in my hand was when I deposited Mr. Aslam’s own donation to the dream he struggled to make real. When he moved his store from Costa Mesa to Tustin a few months later, Mr. Aslam didn’t have to hire movers – his friends from his masque came and pitched in late one evening and helped him move everything.

That night when we moved the store, I worked alongside many Muslims as we lifted and moved the several thousand bolts of fabric that Mr. Aslam had tucked away at the mall, in his garage and pilled like a small horde of silk and taffeta in his living room. It was hard not to notice the strong sense of community that Mr. Aslam and his Muslim brothers and sisters shared, and I found myself more than a little envious. Muslims, I came to understand, could be the kindest, gentlest and most welcoming people I’ve ever met, and they never once made an issue of my religion or my many differences from them.

So when I turn on my television or pick up my newspaper these days, I tend to think that few of my fellow journalists have ever met anyone like Mr. Aslam. If they had, I think they’d spend less time mangling Arabic words like jihad – which means inner struggle, not holy war – and spend more time talking about the true meaning of the Prophet’s message. I like to think that we in the media would try to build bridges between East and West instead of casting the meeting of two cultures in purely militaristic terms. Neither the word Islam nor the faith of hundreds of millions of men and women worldwide is a synonym for terrorism and I am tired of seeing them treated this way.

As one young Muslim named Rahim told me today, the actual meaning of the word ‘Islam’ is rarely spoken of on CNN. I think it’s time to set the record straight, and make one small repayment to the debt I owe Mr. Aslam for his faith and kindness towards me:

Islam, it turns out, literally translates into the English word ‘peace’.