Why So Few Syrian Christian Refugees?

From The Stream:

Many Americans would happily have us take in some nice Syrians who have nowhere in the Middle East to turn, who are hunted, plundered, raped, sold and sometimes murdered. And since we have limited capacity in a world of more than 7 billion people, it makes sense to focus on those who have nowhere safe in the Middle East to turn. Yes, Sunni and Shiite Muslims persecute each other in the Middle East, but each group has Sunni or Shiite enclaves they can retreat to in the region. The Christians, meanwhile, aren’t even safe in the refugee camps.

So dangerous are the camps for Syrian Christians that they mostly avoid them. And the UN does its refugee head-counting in the refugee camps. If the Christians aren’t there to be counted, desperate as they are, then they don’t end up on the asylum lists the U.S. State Department uses for vetting potential refugees.

So, why doesn’t the White House take steps to find and include persecuted Syrian Christian in numbers at least proportionate to their slice of the Syrian population? Maybe the Obama administration just doesn’t care, but even if they cared a little, doing something serious about it would risk annoying the Muslim leaders of the Muslim-dominated countries in the Middle East.

As bad off as the Muslim refugees are, they aren’t without politically well-connected advocates in the Middle East. Many Muslim powerbrokers are happy to see Europe and America seeded with Muslim immigrants, and would surely condemn any U.S. action that appeared to prefer Christian over Muslim refugees, even if the effort were completely justified. By and large, they support Muslim immigration to the West and have little interest in seeing Christian refugees filling up any spaces that might have been filled by Muslim refugees.

The deck, in other words, is heavily stacked against the Christian refugees. The White House has been utterly feckless before the Muslim power structure in the Middle East that is doing the stacking, and has tried to sell that fecklessness to the American people as a bold stand for a religion-blind treatment of potential refugees —religion tests are un-American! It’s a smokescreen. (Read more.)

Here is an interesting article about the screening process for refugees. I do not agree with everything in it. Many people call The Donald xenophobic, but he just wants the laws on illegal immigration to be respected.


Dr. Taylor Marshall on the Christian response to Muslim refugees:

So what would Thomas Aquinas say?

I’m afraid that Thomas would be much harsher than most of us would feel comfortable with.
Thomas prizes the “common good” so highly under the virtue of political justice that he openly promotes arms and capital punishment against those who are publicly “dangerous and infectious.”
The common good is the peace of society so that life and faith can thrive. Babies can be born and have a happy life. Grandparents can grow old together. Anyone who seeks to destroy the common good should be, according to Thomas, destroyed.

Thomas Aquinas also taught that anyone that fomented “danger to the community” or heretical movements is worthy of the death penalty:

“Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.” STh II-II q. 64, a. 2.
It is permissible to kill a criminal if this is necessary for the welfare of the whole community. However, this right belongs only to the one entrusted with the care of the whole community — just as a doctor may cut off an infected limb, since he has been entrusted with the care of the health of the whole body. STh II-II q. 64, a. 3.

Have no doubt that Thomas Aquinas would have stated that Christian nations should receive Christian refugees but refuse Muslim refugees for the sake of national justice and the common good. The Muslim’s official declaration of faith denies natural law (eg, polygamy), religious liberty (eg, Sharia), and implicitly Muhammad’s doctrine and example of political violence.
(Read more.)

Another great reflection on the refugees by a devout Christian who works with them. To quote:

My heart has become in even greater anguish because of the turn of events over the past week: Paris attacked by terrorists possibly from many different countries. And in the wake of that, thousands of Facebook users changed their Profile Pic to that of France’s flag colors. I changed my Profile Pic in solidarity as well. But not everyone stands in solidarity with France. An Iraqi refugee family that has been living in the U.S. for 18 months (father, mother, 2 grown sons, 2 high school sons) that my own family befriended chose to change their Profile Pics to the colors of the Iraqi flag. Under one of the grown son’s profile pic, his mother (a woman that I have shared many dinners with) wrote in Arabic: ‘Go to hell, America. May God curse America and Israel to hell.’ I replied with a warning to use great caution when making online curses against a country that has taken them in, provided them with refuge, financial assistance and free education. Up to this point, there was no indication that there were any negative feelings toward the U.S. I took them to be very friendly, engaged, thankful refugees.I am still in shock over the French attacks and over my “friend’s” post. Because of all the emotion and confusion I’m experiencing, I deactivated my Facebook account, but not before screenshotting this damning post and reporting it to the refugee resettlement agency. (Read more.)

I heard that ISIS had their own magazine but I thought it was a joke. Apparently it is not. To quote from  A Conservative Blog for Peace:

Cracked presents a variant of one of its strong suits, reporting news of the weird (the other being teaching little-known history that should be better known; its weakness is it's becoming as cravenly politically correct as The Onion with sermonizing): 7 things I learned reading every issue of ISIS' magazine, Dabiq.

• In important ways they're exactly what you think and are honest about it: they're evil killers proud of their slaughter.
• Don't invade, don't invite. Killing them doesn't deter them; they're willing to die. Their violence in the West (to Muslims here: "If you can't move here like you should, kill a Crusader there for us") makes sense because they're picking a fight, not trying to get our sympathy. They want us to invade Syria so they can fight us on their turf. Makes sense militarily plus it conveniently fulfills one of their prophecies.
• Western politeness/lefty showing off — "It's Daesh, not ISIS" — doesn't mean anything to them.
• They're thieves, parasites: they get most of their money from robbing banks and steal most of their weapons from us and the Russians.
• Their worst enemy and biggest fear, the biggest threat to them: they're going broke. Like depriving a fire of oxygen, just let them burn out over there.
• Stopped clock: drugs are bad and gold is good, common sense they believe in, which the lefties at Cracked make fun of, taking a swipe at Ron Paul and Internet libertarians for the gold part. I'll add: they realize that having lots of kids is good; contracepting and aborting yourselves into extinction is stupid.
• The people they hate the most aren't white Westerners but heretical or lapsed Muslims, even the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They mostly kill other Muslims.

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