The
following excerpts are from AINA.org:
Christians
make up a tiny percentage of the Syrian refugees the United States
has resettled. Is that wrong?
The
topic is raging this week, with multiple governors and GOP
presidential candidates saying Syrian refugees should be shut out
after the Paris attacks by Muslim radicals. President Obama then said
it was "shameful" to have a religious test for refugees of
war. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have
religious tests to our compassion," he said.
In
fact, the role of religion in how refugees are considered and how the
United States looks at persecution is more complicated. Religion is
considered by both the United Nations and the State Department, which
defines a refugee as "someone who has fled from his or her home
country and cannot return because he or she has a well-founded fear
of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political
opinion or membership in a particular social group."
A
torrent of other issues also come when refugee status is considered.
How severely persecuted is the group? Is their religion the primary
factor or are there other issues, such as political or ethnic
affiliations that are equally or more significant? Does the group
have other options, anywhere to else to go?
Whether
the United States works too hard or not hard enough for persecuted
Christians overseas has become increasingly explosive in the last
decade. In that period, conditions for religious minorities in the
Middle East have seriously deteriorated. And in the United States,
some religious Americans see hostility in President Obama's
liberalizing policies about birth control and gay rights. Among many
of these people, and others, anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise.
Some 30 percent of Americans wrongly believe Obama is Muslim.
Advocates
for Middle Eastern Christians note that this group is disappearing
from the region of Jesus's birth in the rubble of government chaos in
Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
This
week such Americans were jarred by a Yahoo News report that the State
Department is about to designate the Islamic State's assault on the
small population of Yazidis in Iraq genocide -- a very rare move that
could have implications for the United States to hold perpetrators
accountable. While other religious minorities from the region,
including Christians, are described as severely persecuted for their
faith, the Yazidis are described as under a particular kind of siege.
The
report suggests the government is influenced by a Nov. 12 paper by
the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Simon-Skjodt Center for the
Prevention of Genocide. That paper said the Islamic State "is
carrying out a widespread, systematic, and deliberate campaign of
ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" against Yazidis,
Christians, Turkmen, Shabak and other minority groups. Of that group,
only the Yazidis faced genocide because "the attacks on them
were to make sure no future Yazidis would be born. To end them as a
people altogether," Naomi Kikoker, deputy director of the
center, told The Post. She cited interviews with residents and said
Christians "faced slightly different treatment" if
"horrific," being forced to leave, pay a tax or convert.
That
was the first time the museum had declared anything a genocide since
2004, when it used the term for the Darfur region of Sudan.
But
the possibility of a State Department proclamation led prominent
advocates for Middle Eastern Christians to say it showed bias.
"If
true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration
of a politically correct bias that views Christians -- even
non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria -- never as
victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors," wrote Nina
Shea in National Review Nov. 13.
Read
more by clicking below:
Why the Question of Christian vs. Muslim Refugees Has Become So Incredibly Divisive
