GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT 113
disbelief. At least for a few weeks it appeared that Muslim Americans were
going to be spared (although television and especially radio broadcasts were
already casting what looked like malicious and suggestive commentaries that
were scary and suggested cause for concern). For a few days, at least, Muslims
in the United States, citizens, resident or otherwise, were allowed to live their
routine. There was no internment in the Japanese-American style. In this
twenty-first century in the throes of globalization, in the United States there has
to be a justifiable legal reason or at least some semblance of legality to ware-
house even a fraction of any people. In addition, Muslims come in all colors
and shades and the fact that they come from various cultural backgrounds makes
it impossible to distinguish some Muslims from the non-Muslim American man
or woman. Besides, it had been only ten years since the Japanese-American sur-
vivors of the World War II internment were asked to forgive the misdeeds of
the government. The living memory of the Japanese internment probably pre-
vented a similar project, but what was allowed was an unprecedented large-scale
authority to arrest and detain people and transgress their civil rights
This time around, a whole new act Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,
better known as the USA PATRIOT Act was rushed to Congress and signed
into law by the president on 26 October 2001. Critics have charged that the act
gives the Executive branch the power to circumvent the requirement of the
Fourth Amendment: probable cause when conducting wiretaps and searches. In
his review of James Bouvard (2003), Raimondo (2003:27) writes:
The sheer number and absurdity of the incidents described by Bouvard in
which innocent individuals have been charged, jailed and held incommunicado,
their lives destroyed by callous, downright stupid government bureaucrats is a
phenomenon that would have conservatives up in arms if carried out by the
Clinton administration, past or future. That people were being rounded up
arbitrarily to jack up the numbers of   apprehended terrorists  recalls the Soviet
style of rule, where   it did not matter how many bushels of potatoes were rot-
ten  as long as the five year plan was fulfilled. In the same way . . . the success
of the investigation after 9/11 was gauged largely by the number of people
rounded up, regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Although neither Bouvard nor Raimondo mention that Muslims were the
main sufferers under the impact of the USA PATRIOT Act, others have
pointed out the extent to which Muslims have suffered from the government s
action. In fact, the USA PATRIOT Act seems to have come into effect a few
days before it was signed into law. According to Arshad, our main informant
in Chicago, less than a week after 9/11, the bustling Devon Avenue in Chicago
became a ghost town. Agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and those of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms apprehended people almost at
will. It was like a   bum rap.  Those who were not rounded up by the police
did not dare to come out on the street. Arshad was slow to realize what was
happening. He had to pay for his folly by spending one harrowing night behind