NEW YORK -- Sukhrob Sobirov was 20 when he left Uzbekistan with his parents and sister in 2009 and immigrated to the U.S. through a visa lottery program.
The family relied on relatives at first but eventually settled into life in Brooklyn. Sobirov learned English, got a job managing his uncle's restaurant, and married and had a daughter with another immigrant from Uzbekistan.
His U.S. beginnings are typical among the thousands of Muslim immigrants who have arrived from the former Soviet republic over the past decade -- including Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old charged in Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan that killed eight people.
Saipov immigrated through the same visa program in 2010, used family contacts to get a job as a trucker, and married and had three children with an immigrant from his home country.
The similarities end, however, with what authorities say was a conversion from moderate Islam to extremism. Authorities said Saipov carried out the attack -- using a rented truck to mow down people on a crowded bicycle path -- in the name of the Islamic State extremist group, which two days later claimed responsibility in its weekly newsletter.
Now the Uzbek community in the United States is struggling to understand how one of its own could have carried out such an attack.
In interviews in the Kensington and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods of Brooklyn, home to a significant Uzbek population, many were quick to point out that while the country is predominantly Muslim, most are not very religious, let alone extreme in their views.
"We were shocked, we were surprised," Sobirov said. "How could this guy do this?"
"I love my Uzbek roots," he said. "But now if you say [you're from] Uzbekistan, people are going to look at you funny."
Of the 63,000 Uzbek immigrants in the U.S., nearly half live in the New York area, compared with about 10 percent in California, which has the second-largest population.
The earliest immigrants from Uzbekistan were Jews who arrived in the 1970s under a program that allowed them to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Muslims started coming later, with most arriving after 2000.
Uzbeks have a long history of working outside their country.
Like other parts of the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan struggled after the fall of communism to transition to a market economy, said Nate Schenkkan, a Central Asia expert at the think tank Freedom House. Millions of citizens left to find work in Russia, Turkey and elsewhere.
In the U.S., Uzbeks commonly work in education, health care and social services, according to the U.S. Census. Many also work as Uber drivers -- Saipov's most recent employment -- as well as in the trucking and construction industries.
"They love to work, they love to make money, give their kids a good education," said Shavkat Tashmatov, a professional singer from Uzbekistan. "They want to have a good life."
Tashmatov lived in Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates and earned a good living, he said. But he repeatedly entered the visa lottery in hopes of giving his children better opportunities, finally winning a slot and moving to the U.S. in 2012.
Tashmatov, 46, grew up Muslim but said he is "not at all" religious -- which is typical among Muslims from Uzbekistan, where governments dating back to its Soviet days have quickly cracked down on extremism.
He said he was deeply saddened by Tuesday's attack and struggling to make sense of it.
"Even in Uzbekistan it is hard to find radical people," he said. "Why here? I don't understand."
Meanwhile, as some conservative commentators and news agencies noted that "Sayfullo" translates to "Sword of God," several experts cautioned that the name may not have held religious significance for his parents.
A Washington Post editorial noted that Tony Shaffer, a retired Army colonel, said on Fox News' Fox & Friends that the suspect's first name is worth taking into consideration to ensure "we're not importing Europe's terror problem."
Professor Adnan Haydar, who is in charge of the Arabic program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said the suspect's first name does translate to "Sword of God." Yet, Haydar said he does not see any ominous connotation to the name and said there are likely many people with the same first name in Central Asia.
Nikolay Antov, a historian and associate professor at UA, said in a written response Saturday that the name is common in many Islamic societies. Even though the name's meaning could invite "far-reaching speculations," people must be cautious "not to make too much out of it," he wrote.
"I certainly doubt that the parents of Sayfullo Saipov were thinking too much of any historical/ideological implications when they gave their son this name in Soviet Uzbekistan," he wrote, though he added that the suspect's parents may have known that the name was linked to a historical Muslim general.
Kristen Brustad, an associate professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, also cautioned against deriving significance from the suspect's name.
"Parents name their children for varied and unknown reasons (and often just to follow current fashion). Surely we can see that is ridiculous to say that the parents named their newborn son in the hopes that one day he would [immigrate] to the U.S., lose his mental stability and murder people," she wrote in a response Saturday.
Information for this article was contributed by Nina Agrawal of the Los Angeles Times, and by Ryan Tarinelli of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 11/05/2017