Forty years ago when I entered the field of Islamic studies, the Muslim world was just about invisible. Muslims were absent from most people's cognitive and demographic maps. Although Islam was the second largest of the world's religions, its representation in publications, media, religion departments, and school curricula was marginal to nonexistent. At that time, in contrast to today, most cities did not have mosques and Islamic centers. Indeed, America was Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, as the 1950s title of Will Herberg's book on religion in America noted. Conventional wisdom told us that westernization and secularization were essential to the process of modernization; many believed that the Middle East must face the choice between "Mecca and mechanization".