For Muslims across North Texas, 9/11 set off a wave of Islamophobia that has endured to this day

From subtle remarks to hate-fueled assaults, the prejudice that erupted from the terror attacks has challenged many Muslims’ ideas about what it means to be American.

(DALLAS NEWS) Nearly 20 years ago, as he lay on what he feared would be his deathbed, Rais Bhuiyan bargained with God for his life.

Moments earlier, he had been shot in the face with a shotgun by Mark Stroman, a white supremacist who in the days after 9/11 targeted people he assumed were Muslim in an Islamophobia-fueled shooting spree in Dallas and Mesquite.

“I promised God, ‘If you give me a chance to live, I will do good things in my life. I will dedicate my life to the needy, poor and deprived,’” recalled Bhuiyan, an American of Bangladeshi descent.

Bhuiyan survived, but Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant, and Vasudev Patel, an Indian American who was not a Muslim, were slain.

For Bhuiyan and other Muslims, including the tens of thousands who live in North Texas, the Sept. 11 attacks stirred a crescendo of Islamophobia that for the next two decades challenged their beliefs about what it means to be American.

“I was in total shock. I couldn’t believe that something had happened to me in my dream country,” Bhuiyan said. “America was a dream country to me.”