CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Bassam Issa stepped in front of a crowded classroom of students this month at Southern Adventist University, a Christian college near here, for a presentation on being Muslim in Chattanooga — recently named America’s most “Bible-minded city.”

Mr. Issa, a real estate developer and the president of his local mosque, was struggling with how to attack the assumption that Islam gives rise to terrorism. He knew that the association was strong: Only last July, here in Chattanooga, four Marines and a sailor were killed in a terrorist rampage by a young Muslim man who grew up in the local community. Many people here now speak of that day, July 16, as “7/16,” as if it were an echo of “9/11.”

And just a week before Mr. Issa’s visit to the college, there had been another attack, when a married Muslim couple killed 14 people and wounded 22 in San Bernardino, Calif.

“Every time something like this happens, we have national news media, local news asking us, what do we think?” Mr. Issa said.

President Obama recently challenged Muslims to speak out against extremism and build closer ties to know their non-Muslim neighbors.

Aware of this, and compelled by the rise of both the Islamic State and anti-Muslim sentiment, many American Muslims here and across the country are now saying it is no longer enough to denounce terrorism and assert that Islam is a religion of peace. Instead, no matter how exasperated they may privately feel, some Muslims are beginning to publicly confront the uncomfortable questions that non-Muslims have about Islam and violence, and trying to provide answers, both through words and through the example of how they live their lives.

Read the article “US Muslims Begin to Publicly Confront Questions on Islam and Violence” on nytimes.com.