The Washington Post offers up a short piece for Sunday's paper addressing “Five myths about mosques in America.”

The listing is provided by Edward E. Curtis IV, millennium chair of liberal arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the author of “Muslims in America: A Short History” and the editor of the “Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History.”

The myths he debunks include incorrect beliefs that: mosques are new to this country; mosques try to spread sharia law; most people who attend mosques are of Middle Eastern descent; mosques are funded by groups unfriendly to the U.S.; and mosques lead to homegrown terror.

On the last one, Curtis writes:

To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions: In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.

No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, largely because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.

There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.

Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.