In the post-9/11 world there is an urgent the need for Americans to understand the Muslim world, and vice versa. Yet precisely when they should be visiting Muslim countries, Americans are kept at home by fears of terrorism. War zones aside, those fears are overblown. It is time their government and their media helped would-be American travelers gain a more realistic understanding of the typically minor risk of anti-U.S. violence that awaits them in the Muslim world.

Recently my wife and I spent a week strolling the streets of Beirut and traveling by bus in its hinterland. The trip was a fool's amusement in the scary light of official and media images of the Middle East as a dangerous place. Yet everywhere we went we felt welcomed.

I own a t-shirt that spells out "CANADA" in large letters beneath a maple leaf. Before leaving California I thought, only half-facetiously, of bringing it along. I'm glad I left it behind. The Lebanese we met were hospitable not hostile.

I am not advising naivete; Lebanon's horrific civil war in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s destroyed much of this city. Washington intervened. More than 200 American soldiers died in a building shrunk to rubble, apparently by Hezbollah -- a self-described Party of Allah that the U.S. still considers a terrorist organization. Beirut became a synonym for mayhem.

Echoes of Beirut's frightening reputation were heard this year in a series of bombings that killed nearly two dozen Lebanese, including Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February, scholar-journalist Samir Kassir in May, and opposition politician George Hawi on 21 June, only two days after we had left the country.

An American visitor's initial impressions of Beirut today are ambiguous. Inspiring confidence are the relaxed atmosphere at the new, ultra-modern, and just-renamed Rafiq Hariri Airport and, seen through taxi windows, the attractively renovated downtown area. But then one's taxi skirts the burned-out hulk of the St. George Hotel and, alongside it, behind police tape and armed guards, the twisted carcasses of cars -- detritus from Hariri's assassination.

This juxtaposition of alarm and assurance has become the unnerving natural condition of American travel to and in Muslim or mostly Muslim countries. Survey research shows approval of the United States among the world's billion-plus followers of Islam near an all-time low. The U.S. is viewed unfavorably by 58 percent of Lebanese, according to a just-released Pew Research Center opinion poll. Lebanon and other Muslim-majority societies account for more than half of the 29 countries to which the State Department discourages American travel. Yet in these mainly Muslim destinations the odds that a prudent American tourist will become a casualty of terrorism remain infinitesimal.

I went to Lebanon to do research, to lecture at the American University of Beirut, and to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of my high-school alma mater, the American Community School. For decades, Arab sons and daughters have vied for entry into these and comparable institutions elsewhere in the Middle East, including the American University in Cairo. In Lebanon, in the upland village of Deir al Qamar, I found a small photo shop whose owner had proudly posted a sign identifying himself as a "U.S.A. GRADUATE, BOSTON."

These signs of American popularity must seem incomprehensible to Americans fearful of Muslim wrath. But what really makes no sense is the apocalyptic vision of the Muslim world that America's media tend to purvey, a vision that encourages would-be travelers to stay in Indiana and skip Indonesia.

Overseas Muslims in my experience have a split-level view of America. Most of them dislike -- some detest -- U.S. policy while simultaneously admiring the freedom and openness that Americans, at their best, represent. Many Americans feel the same way. Meanwhile, security concerns have encircled U.S. embassies with enough protective barriers and identity checks to make diplomacy resemble self-imprisonment.

As relaxed interactions at the official level have become a casualty of the war on terror, people-to-people contacts have become more vital than before. The fewer Americans Muslims meet, the less contested will be the image of the U.S. as a cruel montage of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

A task force ought to brainstorm ways of overcoming unrealistic fears of travel. The Bush administration has acknowledged the need to win Muslim hearts and minds abroad. It is time to win back overfearful American hearts and minds as well.

The United States needs natural gas. Developing countries many thousands of miles away are willing to supply it. This sleepy beachfront town and other communities along the Gulf of Mexico are likely to become the links between producers and consumers.

Altogether, energy companies are planning to spend more than $100 billion in the next decade to bring gas from developing countries to rich nations, according to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm. The only way to do it is to supercool the gas so that it condenses into a liquid, which is then compact enough to load onto tankers and send across oceans.

For years, this process was too costly to compete with relatively cheap domestic supplies of natural gas and with imports from Canada. But those supplies are tightening just as the demand for clean-burning gas is soaring. That has led to the most severe gas shortage in the last 25 years and caused domestic gas prices to double this year.

The gap between domestic supply and total demand is forecast to grow significantly over the next 20 years. That has made liquefied natural gas competitive, if only companies can find places that are willing to accept having L.N.G. terminals built nearby. "We've entered the gas age, and there's no turning back if we want a firm supply of a strategically crucial fuel," said Michael S. Smith, an investor who controls Freeport LNG, a Houston company that plans to build a receiving terminal on Quintana Island.

Mr. Smith and his partners, Cheniere Energy and Contango Oil and Gas, both of Houston, expect to begin construction of the terminal early next year on this tiny island about 70 miles south of Houston. The $400 million operation will be able to receive ships full of liquefied natural gas, warming the gas and piping it to a nearby plant owned by the Dow Chemical Company.

Quintana Island's attraction lies not only in its proximity to a plant that uses natural gas as a raw material but also in its location near the center of the nation's energy industry. That, it is hoped, will make political resistance to such projects tepid compared with the safety, aesthetic and environmental concerns in places like Northern California and Massachusetts.

Despite such concerns and worries that large, potentially explosive gas terminals could become terrorist targets, energy companies are eager to import liquefied natural gas. It is a shift that could avoid gas shortages forecast for the future, but could also increase the nation's dependence on foreign energy supplies.

"Just as we're debating the need to diversify our oil supplies, we're faced with an array of challenges to secure reliable and politically stable sources of gas," said David G. Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.

More than a dozen projects like the one here are seeking approval from regulators in North America, including several on the Gulf Coast and in the northern Mexican state of Baja California.

The United States is already the world's largest natural gas producer, and domestic production is expected to increase to 28.5 trillion cubic feet in 2020 from 19.1 trillion cubic feet in 2000, according to the Energy Information Administration. Still, demand is expected to far outstrip production, growing to 33.8 trillion cubic feet by 2020 from 22.8 trillion cubic feet in 2000.

The gas to close that gap - more than five trillion cubic feet, a 40 percent increase in 20 years - will have to come largely from outside the United States.

Almost all of America's imported natural gas currently comes by pipeline from Canada. But a growing market for gas within Canada and rapidly depleting Canadian wells are expected to weaken that country's ability to increase exports. Mexico, though believed to have large untapped gas reserves, is mired in nationalist debate over making it easier for foreign financiers and companies to explore for gas.

As a result, Mexico, a power in crude oil, is a growing importer of natural gas - and an attractive base for liquefied natural gas receiving terminals, which cost as much as $700 million to build. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently forecast that the percentage of North America's gas from imports would climb to 26 percent by 2030 from just 1 percent today.

Those imports will come mostly from developing nations like Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony in West Africa where Marathon Oil of Houston plans to build an L.N.G. plant able to serve gas fields throughout the Gulf of Guinea.

Ambitious ventures are also under way in other West African countries, including Angola and Nigeria, where energy companies were recently burning gas escaping from oil drilling operations because there was no ready market for it. In the Middle East, small countries like Oman, a sultanate on the Strait of Hormuz, and Qatar, are emerging as important gas powers.

In South America, Trinidad and Tobago has become an early leader in exporting liquefied natural gas, although companies in Bolivia and Peru have had difficulties advancing efforts to export L.N.G. to California. Producers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Russia could step in to supply the West Coast, pushing the Andean countries to the margins of the business.

In some ways, the scramble for natural gas projects resembles the heady early days of the oil industry a century ago. Then, British, Dutch and American investors raced around the world to stake out interests in remote oil fields in the Middle East, Central Asia and the archipelagoes of the Java Sea.

Some regions are considered more promising than others. Industry executives point out that just three countries  Iran, Qatar and Russia  hold more than half of the world's natural gas reserves, inevitably focusing attention on the delicate interplay between politics and commerce in these places.

Russia, with the largest proven reserves, plans to start exporting liquefied natural gas in 2007 with deliveries to Japan. Iran, while off limits to American companies because of trade restrictions by the United States, has attracted Japanese, French, British, Indian and South Korean concerns interested in mounting gas ventures.

There are important differences, however, between past oil booms and the current interest in natural gas. For one thing, studies show the world will be swimming in natural gas supplies while oil reserves are expected to dwindle in the decades ahead. Just one area in Qatar, a monarchy near Saudi Arabia with fewer than a million people, is thought to have enough gas to supply the United States for 40 years, according to a study by Deutsche Bank.

The natural gas industry has to overcome several obstacles before evolving into a vibrant global market. Even with ample supplies there is no market for trading liquefied natural gas, as there is for crude oil. Instead, producers and customers sign long-term contracts, sometimes resulting in significant price differences from one year to the next or from one country to another.

One reason the natural gas market has remained fragmented is because the fuel is difficult and expensive to extract and transport. But these costs are declining, adding to the appeal of gas projects. Lord Browne, the chief executive of BP, said the cost of developing gas liquefaction plants had halved since the 1980's, while shipping costs had also fallen.

Shipbuilders are seeking to meet demand for tankers, with the global gas fleet expected to grow to 193 ships by 2006 from 136 in 2002, according to LNG One World, a gas- shipping information service operated by Drewry International of Britain and Nissho Iwai of Japan.

Natural gas is still not considered as crucial as oil for overall energy security since oil's main use is for transportation and there is no short-term alternative. Natural gas has a variety of important industrial uses, like serving as a raw material for fertilizer and generating electricity.

Still, the growth in demand for liquefied natural gas in the United States is expected to outstrip other parts of the world. It is likely to grow 35 percent in the next five years, compared with 20 percent in other North Atlantic countries and 12 percent worldwide, according to Deutsche Bank. Hence the rush to proceed with projects that supply liquefied natural gas to the United States.

"The world could be consuming more gas than oil by 2025," Philip Watts, the chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the large British-Dutch energy company, said in a recent address to industry executives in Tokyo. "We must be prepared for growing geopolitical turbulence and volatility in an increasingly interdependent world."

The United States has only five terminals capable of receiving L.N.G., including one in Puerto Rico. Almost 20 are on the drawing board, but opposition to the terminals has already prevented the start of work on several of them. Earlier this year, for instance, Shell and Bechtel Enterprises shelved a plan to build a terminal about 30 miles north of San Francisco because of stiff public opposition.

California remains perhaps the most difficult place in the country to gain approval for gas-receiving terminals. This has encouraged imaginative proposals like one last month from BHP Billiton, Australia's largest energy company, for a $600 million floating terminal 20 miles off the coast of Oxnard in the southern part of the state. It remains to be seen whether any of the California projects will be built.

An air of resignation hangs over even the critics of the plan to build the terminal on Quintana, which is scheduled to start operating by 2007. Officials from Freeport LNG have told residents that they expect to make more than $1 million a year in tax payments to the city, a substantial sum for a community of 40 homes that is the smallest municipality in Texas.

At the Jetties, a restaurant on the island's edge overlooking the brown water of the Gulf of Mexico, the walls are plastered with warnings of the perceived dangers of receiving tankers full of potentially combustible gas from far-flung parts of the world. But the restaurant's employees seem to believe that the terminal will be built, inevitably changing the island's easygoing atmosphere.

"People come out here to drink beer on the beach and look at the birds and the gulf," said Dana Difatta, a cook at the restaurant. "Imagine what they'll think when they're staring at some huge vats holding natural gas. Will they be horrified or relieved?"