Kado Mills is a one-horse town on Route 66.
It's got one gas station, one grocery store, six churches, and one white Muslim, David.
Islam emphasizes a lot of the same ideals that this country was actually founded on.
Ideals of individual rights for all people, equality under the law.
I would say that being a Muslim has helped me to better appreciate the values on which the country was founded.
And I think to a certain extent, the country has forgotten.
At this point, I couldn't actually even conceive of not being Muslim.
I think it would, it's kind of like the idea of thinking about, you know, not breathing.
There's a lot of pressure to not convert to Islam.
But on the other hand, there's always been an undercurrent in American popular culture
of supporting the underdog or, you know, not going with the herd.
There's plenty of people still in this country that are willing to say,
well, I believe this is true and I'm going to go with that, you know,
and if anybody doesn't like it, well, nuts to them.
Like the other white converts, David actually thinks being Muslim makes him a better American.
With his wife Najma and their two daughters, he's living his version of the American dream.
But is it tough being the only Muslim family in town?
Do people look at us? Yeah, they do.
It's so common now that I really hardly even notice it.
We actually get stared at by, on all sides.
When we're in the larger non-Muslim society,
people stare at my wife or my daughter because they're wearing the hijab
and then they realize they're with that, hey, they're with that blonde white American guy.
Well, what's up with that?
So they, you know, they, after, then they're, instead of staring at them,
they start staring at me and then they start staring at all of us.
And it kind of goes the other way in the Muslim community, you know,
here's this blonde white guy and, you know, well, who's he?
He's with her.
What's going on there?
So we kind of get stared at from all sides.
But most people are pretty polite about it.
You know, they try not to stare.
People out here, if anything, are more tolerant than the people in the city.
The stereotype of the, you know, the southern bigot is really pretty unfair.
Thank you.
So have a good day.
Thank you, too.
And then in the back.
In the back, yeah.
Thank you.
David spent eight years serving his country in the air force.
He's proud to be an American.
I think in a lot of ways that Islam could save Americans from themselves.