I’m an Arab-American lawyer. Shortly after September 11, the families of three young Arab Muslim men asked me to represent them. The men had been arrested in San Diego as material witnesses and taken to New York to testify in front of the grand jury investigating the attack. They were acquainted with Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Almihdhar, two of the terrorist hijackers who crashed the plane into the Pentagon. Alhamzi and Almihdhar had visited San Diego the year before the attack and befriended my clients.

Though my clients knew nothing about the hijackers’ plans, the Bush administration wasn’t taking any chances. Immediately after September 11, approximately 1,200 Arab and Muslim men were arrested. Many of them are still in secret custody.

My clients appeared before the grand jury, and none of them was ever charged with terrorism. Despite this, most people perceived them to be terrorist suspects. As soon as I became associated with their cases, I began receiving death threats.

Matters worsened in May 2002 when I received a telephone call from Zacarias Moussaoui’s mother. He’s the alleged “20th hijacker” who is on trial for his life in Virginia. His mother retained me to try to persuade him to cooperate with his defense lawyers. Though I represented her, not her son, more death threats rained down on me. I, too, was now considered a terrorist. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I was born in Los Angeles to Lebanese-American parents. They taught me to go to school and make something of myself. I graduated from UCLA School of Law and started a private practice. I speak Spanish, not Arabic, because if you do business in southern California, knowing Spanish is a good idea. I own a quarter horse, love football and am a member of the NRA. I am a mainstream American.

I’m also a secularized Muslim. While I was growing up, my family attended the local mosque once a week. Back then, Islam in America was “Westernized.” The imam didn’t have a beard, men and women weren’t segregated except during prayers and the services were in English.

Today, Islam in America is much more fundamentalist. The imams wear tunics and conduct services in Arabic. Men and women are completely segregated, and the women are strongly encouraged to wear higab (head scarves) or burqas.

I attend mosque only on special holidays, so most local Muslims know I’m not a devout practitioner of Islam. They didn’t trust me at first, but that changed when they saw me vehemently defending my clients in court and protesting the government’s treatment of Arabs and Muslims in the media.

Even so, I didn’t join the fight to protect my own kind; I simply believe the rule of law has been the first victim of the war on terrorism. For example, a material witness can be arrested only if he or she is not cooperating with the government. My clients had been fully cooperating, but investigators claimed they were not in order to arrest them and spirit them away to New York.

On April 30, 2002, New York federal district court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that the material-witness statute couldn’t be used to arrest grand-jury witnesses. She released one of my clients and declared that the testimony of four FBI agents was “not credible” or “misleading.”

My clients were lucky–many of those now in custody may never see a courtroom. The government arrested Jose Padilla–an American citizen–in Chicago, labeled him an “enemy combatant” and contends that he can be held in military prison indefinitely without access to an attorney. Since when does the Constitution allow citizens arrested on U.S. soil to be held beyond the reach of the courts?

The Bush administration is playing fast and loose with our rights. We are only beginning to understand the full impact of the Patriot Act–which was shoved through Congress in the aftermath of September 11–on our civil liberties. Federal agents can now search your home and office without your knowledge, and force your bank, your doctor and even your library to turn over their records about you.

Are Americans willing to sacrifice their freedoms in order to combat terrorism? I hope not. As Ben Franklin said, those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. I’m not fighting for Arabs and Muslims; I’m fighting for all of us.