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Greater Detroit is home to one of the largest Arab populations in North America. This essay explores the complex, often contradictory effects the “War on Terror” is having on Arabs in Detroit. We give special attention to pressures that amplify Americanizing, mainstreaming trends in the community even as they further stigmatize Arabness and Islam. The politics of the moment is forcing Arabs in the U.S. to downplay or suspend their transnational ties (institutional, familial, commercial, and even emotional) in order to prove they are loyal, law-abiding citizens. Cultural theorists who could argue, until very recently, that the nation-state and patriotism were everywhere “withering” and “eclipsed” might be given pause by a closer look at Arab Detroit and its uncomfortable existence on the edge of the American body politic.