Remember a few weeks ago when I said I had a love/hate relationship with political discourse on Facebook? This is where I talk about the “hate” part. It’s one thing to roll your eyes at some goofy status made about a politician and keep scrolling, but the rampant prejudice that flooded Facebook in the hours after the Friday attacks on Paris was saddening and, frankly, a little sickening to read.
Granted, there was a lot of unity on the Internet that day too. People expressed their sorrow and support en masse not only for Paris, but for Beirut and Baghdad as well. They called for unity while it felt like the world was burning.
But the xenophobic sentiment that sprang up before we even knew who carried out the attacks has worsened in the days following, most notably against Syrian refugees. One man killed in the Paris attacks was found with a Syrian passport. Greek authorities, after taking his fingerprints, confirmed the man had registered as a refugee on the island of Leros, the main entry point for Syrian refugees into Europe. That revelation fired up debates in the United States about whether or not to continue to let refugees into the country.
The attackers who were positively identified were all European Union nationals. Relatively speaking, we have very minimal information on the identities of these individuals. European nations have debated slowing their intake of refugees, but never shutting off the flow entirely. But that didn’t stop more than half of all U.S. governors, including our very own Gov. Charlie Baker, from issuing statements saying they will flat out refuse to allow Syrian refugees into their states.
Never mind the fact that states don’t technically have the legal authority to do this, or the fact that the United States has only resettled around 2,000 of the more than 4 million Syrians — around half of whom were children under 17 — who have fled their ravaged country in the past four years, or that refugees must go through an 18- to 24-month screening process to get into the United States. The governors each issued some statement preaching about ensuring safety of their respective states, a few pledging an ironic dedication to immigration in the process.
Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he would “strongly consider” closing mosques in the United States. His fellow candidate Jeb Bush said he would focus on only allowing Christian refugees into the country — no Muslims allowed. No word on how any of them plan to get around a pesky little thing we have called the Constitution.
It’s one thing for distant relatives or former classmates to make some tone-deaf remark on the Internet, but for elected leaders to respond with the same ignorant, knee-jerk pushback is disgraceful.
Since the Syrian Civil War began more than four years ago, the United Nations estimated that more than 200,000 people have been killed — a rough estimate, since the country is too dangerous for the UN to get an accurate death count. To put that in perspective: 129 people were brutally killed in the attack on Paris, while in 2014, around 170 Syrians were barbarically killed every single day.
The reality is that the refugees are fighting against the same terrorist groups we are. The broad anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments that arise in the wake of these Western terrorist attacks are not an accident. ISIS has explicitly stated that it wants to eliminate what it calls “the grey zone.” In other words, the organization wants a violent backlash from us because it will help them recruit impressionable members who feel alienated by the West. It furthers their narrative of engagement in a righteous, apocalyptic war.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has taken in almost 750,000 refugees. Not one of them has been arrested for a domestic terrorism threat. If someone wants to enter the country to do harm to the United States, the long, complex refugee process is not the way to do it.
It is easy to lose our humanity in times like these. We want to be able to feel safe in our beds, but so do the Syrian refugees. The need to “protect our own” is an oft-repeated sentiment, but exhibiting a discriminatory lack of compassion is not “protecting” anyone. It is only creating a more polarized world — a world that ISIS wants to see.
