Now as to your comment about community life and your fear of Lebanon collapsing into a KSA-like state, I have to say our sense of community is bent. Sure you people are friendly and help you out if you need anything, but when it comes to people coming together to make a serious difference in the quality of their own lives, we have failed, and still do, disastrously.
To contrast with Europe, where that sense of local community might not exist, these people have together as a nation and organized themselves in unions, parties, etc.. and made some serious changes that benefit the entire nation. If I had to pick between two kinds of community support, I’d go for the European model, cause while the first one might make you feel good on a day to day basis, it becomes utterly useless when it’s time to lift up your sleeves and get some serious work done.

That said, and while I have a tendency to believe Lebanon will keep a certain “unusual” character, I have to admit that the possibility it turns into a KSA-like state is not inconceivable. We stick together along very religious lines, and as long as that’s true and we remain religiously territorial in our sense of nationalism, the country is pretty much screwed. We are in fact not a nation, and that right there is something to worry about.

I have nervously watched the UN tribunal business unfold and I pray that violence doesn’t erupt again, as it seems to do just when Beirut is finally back on its feet. So naturally, your first paragraph caught my eye especially because whenever I read news stories about Lebanon, which are usually very dire and dramatic, and yet I know many diaspora who continually visit even with the looming threat of violence.

My overriding fear is that the extremists will somehow cause a collapse in the “system” and the country will slowly give way to resembling Saudi Arabia in terms of social freedoms.