When comparative religion professor Martin Jaffee thinks back to September 2001, he remembers great masses of people moving in one direction across the city.
In Jaffee's memory, however, those were not dust-covered refugees fleeing Manhattan. Instead they were the thousands of Seattle residents who climbed the city's hills to hastily formed classes and seminars at the University of Washington to learn whatever they could about Islam.
Two years later those crowds are gone. Across the country, bookstores no longer sell out of copies of the Qu'ran. By all accounts the nationwide race to get educated about Islam and Muslim peoples has become notably less urgent.
The sprint for knowledge may have ended, but the marathon of learning continues, as a variety of indicators say Americans are quietly and steadily plodding along trying to understand Muslims.
"That kind of interest (seen after 9/11) is gone now," said Jaffee, who chairs the comparative religion program at the university's Jackson School of International Relations. "But there is an abiding interest in some of this, because violence and terrorism do not go away."
Signs of the nation's persistent curiosity are subtle but consistent, and they stretch from the ivory tower to the local library.
At Clermont Public Library on the outskirts of Cincinnati, for instance, at times all the introduction-to-Islam-type books and videos purchased after Sept. 11, 2001, have been checked out. They're checked out as often as horoscope titles, according to adult service specialist Richelle Roth.
"For nonfiction religion books, that's pretty good because people aren't normally interested in it," Roth said. "Sept. 11 really opened up the public mind to other religions in the world and to the fact that `they're here in my country.' "
On a macro scale, publishers and booksellers attest to a steady demand for Islam-related materials, especially those that provide insight beyond the basic introduction. Barnes & Noble Booksellers, for instance, reports sales in the Islam sector to be down from the fall of 2001 but still higher than at levels before 9/11.
"Two years ago people wanted to read anything they could get their hands on," said Carolyn Brown, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman. "Now they're more selective because they know so much more."
Muslim groups have played a key role in making sure members of the public, who may not have $20 or $30 to spend on a new book, can still get access to information. More than 6,800 sponsors have paid $150 each to support the million-dollar Library Project of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The group's goal is to put holy books, videos, children's books and other introductory material in all 16,000 of the nation's public libraries. So far the project has reached about 7,000 libraries.
Muslim publishers have also made outreach to the non-Muslim world a priority. Astrolabe Islamic Media Co., which caters mostly to Muslim families, never experienced a spike in sales after Sept. 11, since the non-Muslim public tended to look elsewhere for sources. But in the last two years, sales to non-Muslim buyers have grown by close to 30 percent, according to Jawaad Rahman, vice president of business development.
Non-Muslim customers, he said, have a basis in Islamic studies at this point but want to know more about Muslims who live in America. Astrolabe has responded with two new video/DVDs for distribution to libraries and public broadcasters: "A Visit to a Mosque in America: Understanding Islam and the American Muslim Community" and "Born in the USA: Muslim Americans."
"After Sept. 11, people were asking, `What is this religion all about?' " Rahman said. "Now people say, `I want to know what my (Muslim) neighbors and colleagues think.' "
At major institutions, those credentialed to teach others about Muslims and Islam are continuing to gain higher profile positions.
For instance, the National Council of Churches this year elevated the rank-and-file position of interfaith officer to that of deputy general secretary, which makes the officeholder a top administrator. Also this year, the University of Washington's Jackson School did something "unheard of" in tight budgetary times, Jaffee said, in creating a new faculty position -- Professor of Political Islam.
"We got that through because of the salience of the topic," Jaffee said. "Islam is the hottest subject in religious studies these days, precisely because of 9/11. And religious studies programs have suddenly become very important in political science departments."
Seminary students preparing for Christian ministry have found themselves with more opportunities to study Islam since Sept. 11, according to Jane Smith, co-director of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Conn.
Mainline Protestant denominations are emphasizing Islam as a key subject for interfaith relationships, she said, while evangelical seminaries continue to step up efforts to help missionaries to Arab nations better understand the indigenous faith.
Yet even far from religious circles, those engaged in interpreting world events are more and more willing to provide analysis that considers religion -- especially Islam -- as a key motivating factor. The reason, according to John Berthrong, dean of the Boston University School of Theology and a historian of religion, is that consumers of information now realize they need to understand religion, especially Islam, in order to understand the world around them.
"It used to be that (analysts) didn't want to give religious motives to conflicts that can be explained by politics or economics," Berthrong said. "If you can keep (an explanation) from going religious, do so, because a religious conflict can take on all new levels of nastiness, so don't study it....But you can't avoid planes flying into the Twin Towers. It dawned on people then as it never did before that whether you like it or not, religion is being used and misused in ways we can't ignore."