Pakistan, Sept. 10 -- Asad Dandia was eight when he watched the September 11, 2001 attacks on television at his Pakistani immigrant parents' home in New York.

Then came the backlash - years of Islamophobia as Americans processed attacks that had killed nearly 3,000 people.

There was anger, suspicion and worse.

At 19, Dandia experienced a police informant posing as a friend to infiltrate his family home, part of a now-disgraced surveillance effort purportedly seeking to detect Islamic extremism.

Today, though, the 33-year-old historian finds a New York transformed: one with its first Muslim mayor, public prayers in Times Square and new mosques rising across the city.

"Twenty-five years after 9/11, we mourn and we grieve what happened,...