How did "50,000 Canadians" come to be in Lebanon? Is it one of our major trading partners? Has Bombardier opened up a Ski-Doo plant there? Is Beirut where the Quebec Nordiques wound up? 50,000 Canucks out of a total Lebanese population of 3.8 million works out to about 1.3 per cent of the population. Hezbollah claims 400,000 supporters in Lebanon after 20 years of diligent recruiting and investment by Iran, but Canada has managed to amass an eighth of that figure with nary a thought. Despite significantly smaller populations than our G7 colleagues, we have more citizens in Lebanon than the Americans, British and Germans.
Combined.
...
In The Power of Identity, Manuel Castells writes about what he calls "resistance identities" and the challenge they pose to traditional nation-states. I would prefer the term "resistant identities," in the sense that pan-Islamism is resistant to the usual assimilationist pull of Western societies. Yet hard-core jihad is always going to be a minority interest. And, as those "50,000 Canadians" suggests, indifference could be far more contagious. In the thirties, there were chaps who found themselves in tricky situations in Italy or Romania, Poland or France, and so for a small consideration acquired a passport from some potential Latin American bolthole. But Immigration Canada is the first to practise the racket on an industrial scale -- and to give it away.
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