President Obama's diplomatic overtures in Turkey this week reminded me of kinder, gentler days in our relationships with Muslims.

Critics of the president will be quick with accusations that he is soft on Islamic militants because his long-absent father was Muslim. If he is soft on Islam because of his father's birth religion, then he is probably a rarity. And of course, Obama was largely raised by his Christian maternal grandparents.

Birth into a family of specific faith is the best indicator that children will follow parents into that faith. This is just a general indicator, not something as clear as genetic science. It all depends on the family and the individual.

My college roommate was a Mormon who grew up in a Baptist family. She and her mother had switched to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints a few years earlier.

It was never clear to me just why mother and daughter made that decision, because the father/husband, two brothers and a sister had remained Baptists. Ramona and I frequently discussed her faith, a communication that consisted largely of her defense of Mormonism and answers to my numerous questions.

I finally decided that the change in faiths was rooted at least to some degree in rebellion, either directed toward the father/husband or toward the Baptist Church, which Ramona found to be overly conservative and restrictive.

Not comfortable arguing religion, I did more listening and never did point out that the Mormon church appeared very conservative to me, raised as I was in the relative liberality of the Disciples of Christ Protestant denomination.

So, you see, it's not necessarily the case that a child will follow the father in the faith.

My first experience with a Muslim came while I was single and was sharing an attic apartment with another young woman in Laurinburg. Our landlord and landlady, Barron and Elizabeth Mills, invited their tenants to join them while they entertained a visitor from Egypt. He was one of several foreign students at N.C. State University whom Laurinburg Rotarians were hosting that weekend.

Aly turned out to be a charming visitor. He was lively and witty and full of anecdotes about his experiences in the United States.

It was his first visit to the United States, and although he spoke excellent English, he was nervous and unacquainted with our ways. Aly was almost starving when he arrived in New York. A tall, heavyset man, he had been warned to be cautious of airline food and thus had eaten almost nothing on the long flight.

His first stop was at a coffee shop, where he told the waitress that he was very hungry, but his religion forbade the eating of anything containing pork. She suggested a hamburger but was never successful in explaining that hamburgers do not contain ham. Then she suggested a hotdog, which he rejected in horror, saying he was unaware that Americans ate dogs. He finally settled on a grilled cheese sandwich. Aly kept us laughing.

Aly accompanied us to the Presbyterian Church that Sunday morning and was alert and interested in what we said and did. Mrs. Mills had read up on Muslims and was prepared with non-pork meals. He really liked her roast beef.

Our Egyptian friend visited the Millses a few times before his graduation, and we all exchanged cordial notes for a number of years thereafter. He returned to the States for at least one visit years later and stopped to see Nancy and her husband, then living in Fayetteville.

She invited my husband and me for a visit. It was great to see him again, but I regretted that Aly had left his French-speaking wife at home.

It would be nice to return to a day of innocent friendliness with people of different religions and different ethnicity without suspicions and accusations or political arguments.

Florence Gilkeson can be reached at 947-4962 or by e-mail at florence@thepilot.com.