“Any ethnic or religious group that is new to American politics is going to go through trouble,” he said, reaching next to his office desk to open a book called “Jews in American Politics.”

He read aloud a passage about how Jews were vilified and blocked from political office until their expertise in various fields proved crucial to the New Deal.

“It’s going to be the same way for Muslims,” he said. “It is just going to take a while.” "(NY Times)

What's unique about the US is that in every decade, there's different ethnic group or religion that get vilified or looked down upon, the poor Irish, the dirty Italians, Japanese, Chinese, the Lebanese, Jews, etc, etc but in the end, those people always manage to rise above and secure themselves in the mainstream strata of US society.

This reminds me of a joke, when a reporter asked whether a certain President whether a Christian can be a President of Egypt; and he answered "not even a Muslim".