For Karim Zéribi, the highlight was shaking the hand of Barack Obama. For Ali Zahi, it was meeting his childhood hero, the basketball star Magic Johnson. And Mohamed Hamidi was surprised to find a mosque in Washington that was bigger than the one in his parents’ village in Algeria.
Mr. Hamidi is a well-known blogger, Mr. Zahi is a mayoral aide in this Paris suburb, and Mr. Zéribi runs an employment agency. All are French, Muslim and under 42. All grew up and work in suburbs that became emblematic of the frustration among second- and third-generation immigrant youths that led to three weeks of riots in France in 2005.
And all three joined the small but growing ranks of influential Muslims in Europe invited to the United States on 21-day trips organized by the State Department as part of its International Visitor Leadership Program.
The longstanding program, which seeks to introduce future leaders from around the world to the United States, has become part of an American effort to reach out to Europe’s Muslims, especially the disaffected young people who American officials fear could fall prey to jihadist talk.
For the three men who participated in the program in recent months, the exposure to America softened views of a superpower generally distrusted and disliked in their communities.
“Many young people think that America is waging a war on Muslims,” said Mr. Zahi, 32, chief of staff for the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, where the 2005 rioting started after the deaths of two teenagers of African origin who were being chased by the police.
“I tell them America is many things,” said Mr. Zahi, who is also on his local town council. “It is a country that has a black presidential candidate and a self-confident Muslim community. I tell them the American people are hospitable and generous.”
But recent reports about the State Department program have also stoked something of a backlash, with some in the news media accusing the participants of being seduced by a program meant to spy on the Muslim community.
The International Visitor program started in the 1930s. Alumni include President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — and the discovery that they were planned by Islamists who lived in Hamburg, Germany — the State Department made reaching out to Europe’s Muslims a priority, according to James L. Bullock, director of public affairs at the United States Embassy in Paris.
France became one focus because of the size of its Muslim community — the largest in Western Europe, with an estimated five million people — and the anger at discrimination and unemployment that was evidenced in the riots. From 25 to 30 French citizens are chosen each year to go to the United States under the program; since the 2005 riots, about a dozen have been Muslim.
Mr. Bullock said the number of Muslims is larger than before, part of the effort to reach minorities for whom “America has become a voodoo doll.” Beyond “delegitimizing the appeal of terrorist recruiters,” Mr. Bullock said, the tours are a way for some Americans to become acquainted with “the future movers and shakers of Europe.”
The United States is trying to reach out to France’s suburbs in other ways as well, by directing some of its small cultural grants to those communities. The embassy has provided grants of $1,000 to $5,000 for events like a conference aimed at identifying new-media talent in the suburbs, Mr. Bullock said.
But even this modest American effort has raised concerns in France. One television documentary on America’s cultural programs in the suburbs and the visitor program included the headline: “The C.I.A. in the suburbs.” And the left-leaning magazine Marianne warned of an “American takeover of Arabs and blacks.”
Mr. Zahi, whose trip last fall took him to Texas, Arkansas, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and New York, said he had felt a backlash. When the newspaper Le Parisien, which is widely read in the suburbs, wrote about his trip, the article appeared opposite one alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency was recruiting in the suburbs and a cartoon of a Muslim using an American flag as his prayer mat. After that, several people accused him of being a spy, Mr. Zahi said.
The French government has conducted similar programs with the United States. When a spike in anti-Semitic vandalism in France drew widespread coverage in American news media in 2002, the French Foreign Ministry sought young Jewish leaders and journalists for its visitor program, said Justin Vaisse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who at the time was an adviser to the French Foreign Ministry. “Often,” he said, “it is just a matter of showing people that the country is more complex than a media cliché.”
Mr. Zéribi, 41, who in addition to running the employment agency is a politician in Marseille, and Mr. Hamidi, 35, the editor of the popular Bondy Blog, returned from the United States last month.
“It was not all pretty,” Mr. Hamidi said, describing rough parts of Washington and visible poverty on the streets of New York City.
But he and Mr. Zéribi were impressed to see people of every color in government offices in Washington. In Los Angeles, they met a Saudi-American teacher preparing to run in local elections. In Jackson, Miss., they spent half a day patrolling with a black police officer.
After shaking Mr. Obama’s hand at a political rally in Philadelphia, Mr. Hamidi shared the experience on his blog, which covers current affairs.
Mr. Zéribi, the son of an Algerian father and an Algerian-French mother, said that he had always thought America’s minorities culturally isolated, but that the trip changed his view.
“I saw the American Dream with my own eyes,” he said. “Barack Obama incarnates that dream.” Mr. Zéribi said that he, like Mr. Obama, had one Muslim grandmother and one Christian grandmother.
“I’m not naïve,” said Mr. Hamidi, who besides his work on the blog is a high school teacher. “I know why they invited us, but this was not clumsy lobbying. It was fun and we learned a lot.”
He has watched first-hand the growth of anti-American sentiment in recent years, he said. Some of his students became intrigued by jihadist ideology in the 1990s, he said, then turned against America in 2003 after the start of the Iraq war. A factor continuing to fuel anti-Americanism, he said, is the perception that Washington’s unstinting support of Israel is unfair to the Palestinians.
All three men said that as a result of participating in the program they had learned as much about France and its prejudices as they had about the United States.
Mr. Zahi and Mr. Zéribi contend that the backlash in the French media was stoked by anti-immigrant feelings. “It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious, people saying we are agents,” Mr. Zéribi said. “When did anyone ever accuse any of the white French politicians on that program of working for the C.I.A.?”
Mr. Zahi said that French elites, unlike Americans, had trouble imagining members of minority groups as future leaders. “Maybe that is why some of the reactions in the French establishment were so paranoid when they learned that America is doing something for the French suburbs,” he said. “Maybe they are afraid of a French Obama.”