DEARBORN, Mich. Theres a running joke here that has residents talking to an omnipresent Uncle Sam.

Off-color or politically contentious remarks whether uttered at work, school, the hair salon, the grocery store, the masjid or the shawarma place are sometimes followed by a person looking up at the ceiling and saying something like: I didnt mean it!

Theyre not looking up at God, explained Dawud Walid, executive director at the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Theyre looking up because they think maybe theres a bug somewhere a recording device, that is, placed by the U.S. government to listen in on a community with one of the highest concentrations of Arab and Muslim Americans in the country.

You have to joke about it to relieve some of the anxiety, said Walid.