It's 1 p.m. in Mission Viejo, California, when Angela Collins answers the call to prayer.
It's her second prayer of the day, and following custom, she'll pray three more times before the day is done.
Now I have this belief, and I love my belief, so I have to respect it and follow the rules.
The rules are not easy to follow.
Angela is Muslim. She has been for almost five years.
Raised Catholic, she learned about Islam after meeting Muslims while traveling overseas.
She converted just two months after September 11th,
a time when the war on terror was almost synonymous with a war on radical Islam.
I saw a very dark persona of Muslims in general to Americans,
and I realized it was so far removed from my actual experience abroad
that people had to know this is not who they are.
This is not how they are.
There are an estimated 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide, and most are not Arabs.
Here in the United States, while the Muslim contingent numbers an estimated 7 to 8 million,
it's growing rapidly.
20,000 new converts each year, four times as many women as men.
In the Quran, it says that women were created independently of Adam,
that Eve was an independent creation of God.
And so for a lot of white American women, that really appeals to their sensibilities of equality,
and it's very liberating for them.
Maybe I'll help you put something.
Julia Roach converted to Islam after being introduced to the religion by her husband, Chris.
They weren't married at the time.
He is also an American.
When I found out he was Muslim, I told him, I believe, right away,
I will never become a Muslim, I will never cover my head, I will never be this person.
So don't ever ask me to be that person.
And he never did.
But she did have lively discussions with him about religion.
She was raised a Christian and said she converted after she was able to see past the stereotypes
and learned about the values of Islam.
The concept of freedom and liberty of each individual person and the rights of each person,
and that's all wrapped up in the theological teachings of Islam as well.
Yes, I'm an American.
I'm very outspoken.
I'm pretty assertive and very happy person.
And it's not the typical stereotype that people see with a Muslim woman.
We're going to eat green eggs and lamb.
Five years after converting to Islam, Angela Collins is now the director of an Islamic school.
It took her a while to get used to wearing the hijab,
but now instead of being a fashion emergency, it's become a fashion accessory.
Yeah, people looked and they were curious, but they never,
a lot of the times they didn't realize I was a Muslim wearing hijab.
They thought, oh, she must be some French designer coming up with a new fashion.
It's not a new fashion, but maybe a new face on the world's second largest religion.
George Lewis, NBC News, Los Angeles.