STONEHAM-ET-TEWKESBURY, Quebec - Patrick Beaudry, bejeweled, tattooed and bearded, lives on a remote wooded hillside in rural Quebec, worrying about living under Shariah law.

A year and a half ago, he huddled with two friends in a Quebec maple sugar shack, discussing how to stop the spread of what they call "invasive political Islam" in Canada. They formed a group called La Meute, or Wolfpack, created a Facebook page and invited like-minded people to join.

Within a month, they had 15,000 followers. Today, the number has surpassed 50,000, and the group is still attracting people. Now, Beaudry and his colleagues say they are shaping those followers into dues-paying members who will give the group financial muscle and, they hope, political clout.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly opened Canada's doors to refugees and presented a face of tolerance and inclusion in a world increasingly hostile to migration. But as Canadian immigration policy has transformed the nation over decades, pockets of intolerance have grown across the country.

Nowhere has it galvanized such large numbers as in Quebec, where many people still refer to themselves as pure laine, or pure wool, direct descendants of the 17th-century settlers of New France. The most emotional response has focused on conservative Muslim immigrants, who perhaps present the greatest contrast to traditional European-based culture and the secularism that Quebec struggled hard to win from the Roman Catholic Church.

The concerns are outsize by any measure. Muslims represent just three per cent of Canada's population, and while Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the country, Muslims will still account for less than six per cent of the population in 2050, according to the Pew Research Center.

Nonetheless, Beaudry and his peers say they believe there is a real threat that Islamists are bending Canada's tolerant culture to their will. The group's main concern is political Islam pushed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Pan-Arab movement that grew out of Egypt after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War.

"Political Islam is slowly invading our institutions," Beaudry declared, claiming that his group had documentary proof, although he was not prepared to show it. "We have to wake up people and shake them up, and then we will be able to bring change."

Canadian Muslims say that not only are such fears unfounded but that propagating them is also dangerous, to Muslims and to society as a whole.

"They are creating a problem where there is no problem," said Hassan Guillet, a lawyer and imam.

Guillet said Canadian Muslims were caught between what he called a relentless and often-negative media focus on Islam and right-wing groups like La Meute that spread misinformation.

"If you keep rejecting the young, they will feel frustrated and feel that they don't belong, and they will look for their own society," Guillet warned, adding that such disenfranchisement had led some young European Muslims down the path of radicalization. "We don't want that. We want our kids to feel that they belong. We want our kids to feel Canadian."

As for the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada, Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum and a frequent target of conspiracy theories, called it simple fearmongering.

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He noted that the largest recent terrorist attack in Canada did not come from Muslims, but targeted them. He was referring to the January killing of six worshippers at a mosque in Quebec by a gunman; the man accused of the killings espoused far-right views.

Small, violent right-wing groups have appeared in the decades since Canada relaxed its immigration laws to embrace multiculturalism. But revulsion toward violence and hate speech has kept such groups on the margins. La Meute has created a more moderate setting where people can communicate their fears.

"La Meute is very different from what we have seen so far," said Samuel Tanner, an associate professor at the International Center for Comparative Criminology at the University of Montreal who studies Canada's far right.

He likened the group's followers to the blue-collar Democrats in the United States who supported President Donald Trump. "They are a new type of right, blending conservatism with some liberal values," he said.

Some experts warn that groups like La Meute, however much they eschew violence, create an enabling environment in which hate can grow. "They are embedded in a broader cultural ethos that bestows 'permission to hate,'" said Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology who has written extensively on right-wing extremism in Canada.

Beaudry, the son of a one-time lumberjack and heavy equipment operator, joined the Canadian army when he was 17 and spent years in Germany. He retired from the army after a car accident in 2002 and subsequently spent several months working as a private contractor in Afghanistan. He was greatly influenced by the spectre of Taliban rule.

He said he and his friends were motivated by the 2014 killing of two soldiers in Canada in separate episodes, both at the hands of Canadian extremists who had converted to Islam. "We realized something was happening," Beaudry said, adding that terrorist attacks in France and Belgium followed soon after.

He said that the primary goal in founding La Meute was to educate members and others about the growth of political Islam in Canada.

Beaudry spoke specifically about the group's opposition to the niqab and the burqa, Islamic styles of dress that cover women's faces. Only a tiny sliver of the Canadian population adopts them, but "if people cannot blend with the society," Beaudry said, "it becomes a cancer, and if you want to save your life, you have to take action."

He also believes a parliamentary motion passed last month that condemns Islamophobia is a move to silence criticism of political Islam and is the first step toward an Islamic anti-blasphemy law.