Some were arrested without charge and held in jail despite their rights to freedom. Others were sneered at, spat upon or even attacked.

Various reports have detailed how Arabic and Muslim citizens and residents of the United States and Canada - or people who simply looked like they could be from those groups - were denied their dignity and due process following the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001.

Some say that after facing an initial barrage of hate they were just as suddenly flooded with support.

Others claim they still struggle to conceive of the nations that treated them with such disdain as 'home'. While some have given up, hoping for a day when they can afford to leave.

We present some of their stories:

'Living with sharks'

Days after terrorists flew planes into US landmarks on 9/11, Usama Sultan, an Egyptian PhD candidate in computational linguistics at the University of Maryland said his students teased him about his name.

"They were joking. They asked when I'd be getting my pilot's license."

The 35-year-old teacher said he took the kidding lightly, but from that day he knew that people would never look at his name - which he now shares with the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden - in the same way.

The biggest change in Usama's life has been the feeling that the United States might not be a place where he will live after he obtains his degree, scheduled for next year. He had wanted to live in the country for good.

Other foreign students began talking about how his records perhaps were being passed to US security agents. Many said their phones were being bugged, their emails read and their contacts scrutinised.

Foreign students say they now have to deal with press articles, especially in right-wing publications, urging a security clampdown on some of them, which, Usama said, "Makes you feel you are living with sharks".

Roughly 500,000 foreign students attend US colleges and universities. Since 9/11 many have had to register with US authorities and endure the process of constantly proving that they attend their classes regularly. The number of Arab students has fallen by 15 percent.

"They do not torture us," Usama said. But "it is irritating and now if I can live somewhere without that irritation, I'll do that".

Fatima Najm remembers well the last trip she took to the United States. It was January and she flew to Miami in search of some sun and a break from the Canadian winter.

''While a close friend packed minute swimsuits and pondered the sun protection factor of our chosen suntan lotion, I sat frazzled on the floor because I'd misplaced my character certificates and a package of recent articles," Najm wrote in a recent article in the Toronto Star newspaper.

(A journalist, she used the articles as proof that she was a 'legitimate' traveller.)

Her friend ''couldn't understand the panicked search that ensued. She couldn't grasp the nuances of my mother's fears as she helped us locate the missing pieces of paper, without which I would not have left for the airport."

"As a blue-eyed blonde, she could never know the indignity of being profiled as a potential security threat as you take off for a fun-filled vacation. And I am glad, because I wouldn't wish it on anyone.''

Najm became a Canadian citizen this July. Formerly a writer at the Star , she now studies and holds three part-time jobs. She is a Sunni Muslim and a self-described ''moderate''.

She also has some questions for her new country.

'Us versus them'

Najm starts with the website for CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, where "it mentions Sunni Muslims as the problem (religious extremism) under the heading 'terrorism'," she says in an email interview.

''Surely there are better ways to keep the public informed than to paint us all with the same brush."

"The problem with rhetoric like this," Najm adds, "is that it creates an us-versus-them scenario, so that Canadian Muslims will feel less and less accepted, and will feel more and more resentful."

"How will we craft a cohesive Canadian identity when we are being stereotyped like this? Who will feel welcome as a Canadian?"

James Zogby asked himself similar questions when the phones started to ring the day after the terrorist attacks.

The founder and president of the Arab American Institute in Washington DC heard words like "all you Arabs should die".

You feel ''like you're not part of the country anymore," he told IPS . ''My family has been here 100 years. How long do you have to be here to not get these calls?''

''There was alienation, numbness, a feeling that I can't be a part of this anymore, that I should be ashamed, afraid, looking over my shoulder."

'Backlash to the backlash'

''Then came something quite extraordinary -- a backlash to the backlash. I got a call from (Massachusetts Senator) Ted Kennedy, asking what he could do to help ...

"By the third, fourth day after the crisis, a dozen senators and political leaders had called, sometimes getting quite emotional, asking how to help and protect me and my family.''

''The media became overwhelmingly supportive. People made brownies and potluck lunches for us. As gratuitous as the threats were, equally gratuitous was the overwhelming support ... It made me feel like people were saying to us, in effect, 'this is your country and don't let anyone change this'.''

Zogby points a finger at one particular agency for causing many of the problems faced by members of his community since Sept 11 - the Department of Justice.

"We have received a great deal of support from churches and others in government," he adds.

But ''even with the bad, in balance, the good has far outweighed it and there has been an extraordinarily strong outpouring of support."

''It has settled into a new set of circumstances that are not as easily definable as one might want to have it be, but it's different, you can feel it, it's just not the way it was.'' - IPS