ABSTRACT
Buffalo, New York, December 2004. Thirty-four American citizens are detained for up to six hours at the U.S. border on their return from a religious conference in Toronto, entitled “Reviving the Islamic Spirit.” They are forced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to surrender their fingerprints. Newspapers the same day report that the United States has failed in its efforts to compile a national fingerprint data bank. They also report that the border has been reopened, after a mad cow disease scare, for cattle from the United States and Canada to move freely back and forth without restrictions or security checks. None, it may be assumed, are crossing the border to attend conferences on “Reviving the Bovine Spirit.”1
