For their own sake, Western nations must contend with the politics of the large and growing diaspora communities they host.
… Canada, in particular, has had a long history of tolerating supporters of militancy abroad. Even after 9/11 built pressure on all Western allies to root out supporters of terrorism, Ottawa resisted calls to clamp down on local financial support for Hezbollah.
Canadian communities also provided much of the financing for Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — who, famously, invented suicide bombing. A lot of that money was raised, according to human-rights activists, by intimidating Canadian citizens who still had relatives in Sri Lanka.
Now tensions have begun to flare domestically as well. Last year, violence between Hindus and Muslims broke out in the post-industrial town of Leicester, while Sikhs and Hindus clashed in the middle of downtown Melbourne in January. Two years earlier, a Hindu man who had been deported from Australia for allegedly attacking Sikhs was given a “hero’s welcome” when he returned to India.
