Growing up, Jason Perez, a former drug dealer turned hip-hop artist, had two recurring dreams. The first was that he would end up in prison by the time he turned 21. The second was that he would end up dead.

Both dreams came true.

Jason stopped dealing drugs and converted to Islam at the age of 21. He subsequently experienced a death of the self-destructive person he was ­-- Jason -- and became Hamza Perez.

With former drug dealers like himself, Perez formed a community of Latino and African-American Muslims who eventually moved from Massachusetts to Pittsburgh. He became active in the community, working hard to help drug dealers get off the streets. He soon ended up in prison, like his dream foresaw, but not as an inmate. Perez became a teacher of faith and religion at the Allegheny County Jail.

In her new film "New Muslim Cool," Jennifer Maytorena Taylor follows Perez through his marriage, his struggles with being a father and his encounters with the law, giving viewers a taste of what life is like for this Puerto Rican-American Muslim.

"It's an interesting way to look at American Muslims who are finding ways to have complex identities and to express those identities through culture and art," said Taylor.

The documentary explores the unique fusion of Islam and hip-hop and defies our perceptions of what it means to be a Muslim.

"When I started this project, I knew nothing about Islam," said Taylor. "But I was just using common sense, which tells me that if there are 6 million Muslims in the United States, they're American."

Inspired by the title of the seminal Miles Davis album, "Birth of the Cool," the film's title showcases this hybrid of Islamic and American culture.

"When I first met these guys, I thought, you know, they're cool," said Taylor. "They said, 'Why do you think we're cool? We don't smoke, we don't drink.' But, in a way, it's anti-cool. They're so not cool that they're cool."

In watching Perez and his brother Suliman, viewers may see the "cool" as their hip-hop group Mujahideen Team or M-Team that, as the documentary shows, has gained popularity in Muslim communities throughout the United States.

"Hip-hop music has a lot of spiritual diseases to it, so you have to constantly remind yourself that you're not doing music to show off," said Perez. "Your music has to have a sense of purpose."

But the "cool" goes a lot deeper than hip-hop, Perez said.

"There's no more cooler human being to me than the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him. Islam is a very cool religion."

As an American Muslim, Perez said he constantly faces challenges in "breaking the misconceptions people have of Muslims."

"Some Muslims today ­-- we may be packaging Islam in the wrong way. They may focus on outward aspects of Islamic ruling and abandon the inward aspects of compassion and tolerance and concern for humanity," he said.

He added that it's important that Muslims continue to defy stereotypes "by putting Islam first and putting culture in our back pocket."

In a memorable scene, Mr. Perez and his friends use music to reach out to Pittsburgh's urban youth, giving out M-Team albums in an effort to instill an alternate message of faith in the kids. The scene showed that in the face of globalization, the increasingly diverse Muslim community is changing.

"There's always been, in the Muslim community, the sense that culture can adapt," said Taylor.

Perez agrees. "Muslims have their way of relating to Islam without compromising the core of Islam."