SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 11: Three years after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Muslims experience backlash in Silicon Valley with about 200,000 Muslim population.

In the three years since Sept. 11, the Northern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading Muslim civil rights group, has logged more than 50 cases of Muslims who say they've been threatened or harassed or discriminated against.

In that same period, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's offices in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland have received 95 work-discrimination complaints from the Silicon Valley Muslims and Arabs. All 95 complaints fall under the category of "9/11 backlash", the council reports.

Because of 1990s high-tech boom, the Silicon Valley's Muslim population has swelled to more than 200,000. Dozens of new mosques and Islamic-oriented schools have opened. An increasing number of local companies set aside rooms for Muslims to pray.

On the three-year anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, many Muslims worry that some non-Muslims still see them as outsiders while violence in the Middle East often leads to an increase in hostile actions against them, according to San Francisco Chronicle.

Souleiman Ghali, Imam of San Francisco mosque, said his mosque gets hate letters. "I get death threats. I've had people on the street shouting at me, Go back to your country," he added.

Yet many Silicon Valley Muslims - especially those who "look Muslim" - complain of job discrimination or of being unfairly targeted by law enforcement. Some say they've changed their day- to-day habits, including how they dress and what they say in public, to avoid possible harassment.

A woman, Yasmin, said she started wearing her Muslim headscarf in a less traditional style in the past year. "I was on a bus and some kids got on, and they started calling me a terrorist," says Yasmin, who doesn't want her last name used because of that experience. "They asked if I was going to blow up the bus." Now, she says, "I don't wear a long, flowing head scarf. I wear it in a bun, so it looks more like a wrap or a fashion statement."

Yasmin was one of scores of Silicon Valley Muslims who've been interviewed by the FBI since March, when the agency started doing "informational" interviews with selected Muslims who have travelled abroad, especially to the Middle East and Pakistan.