While the increased terrorism around the world is most disturbing and we need to find effective ways to eliminate terrorist cells wherever they exist, I reject the notion that we should punish a whole group of people for the despicable acts of extremists who represent a small fraction of the whole. The 30 some governors who are calling for the rejection of all Syrian refugees are, in my opinion, extremists. We should reject everyone who seeks asylum in the US because a terrorist might sneak through? This is profiling, stereotyping, xenophobia, bias and bigotry at its worst and sheer ignorance at its best, if there is a best. And it is not just the Republican politicians. A recent poll showed that 53 percent of all Americans would ban all Syrian refugees from settling in the US.
In our diversity training, when we explain the meaning of stereotyping, we tell participants that anytime we say “all” when referring to a group of people, we will be wrong because “all” for any group will be inaccurate. To say “all” supports an extremist view. Many of the Republican candidates for president are in support of not allowing any Syrian refugees into the United States with Donald Trump (not surprisingly) holding the most extreme view of our need to secure our borders and not allow any Syrian refugees into the US. Ted Cruz said we should only let Christian Syrians into the US. Maybe this is in the same category of Trump idiocy. How would you really know if the Syrian is a Christian? Is there a test for that? Would your priest/minister/spiritual leader have to vouch for you? Would you have to be able to quote so many bible verses? Would you have to show a membership card saying you are a part of the Christian brother/sisterhood? What about Hindu’s or Buddhists or atheists for that matter? Would they not be allowed to settle here in the US either?
What about our modern day American extremists like religious cult leader Jim Jones who is responsible for the suicide deaths of over 900 of his followers in 1978. If we use the same logic of the call to ban all Syrians would that not say that we should ban all of Christianity because there might be some bad ones in the bunch?
We know that the vast majority of Muslims ARE NOT terrorists. Just like a Jim Jones did not accurately portray Christianity, this radical sect is not what Islam is about. Actually ISIS has killed thousands of Muslims across the Middle East, including beheading Sunni Muslims in Iraq for failing to pledge loyalty to them, executing Imams for not submitting to them, and even killing an Imam in Iraq for simply denouncing them. And some experts think that a significant number of the young people who sympathize with and join ISIS were not raised as Muslims at all. Some actually come from Christian families. The psychologists believe that for whatever sick mental state they are in, their interest is really in killing a lot of people not necessarily because they are entrenched in anti-Western extremist Islamic beliefs. A recent poll showed that that ISIS had the support of the overwhelming majority of French Muslims (and especially Muslim youth), as well as the endorsement of a large part of the non-Muslim Left.
The call for a ban on all Syrian refugees is the same kind of extremist ideology as when we interred the Japanese in World War II or when we had Jim Crow laws in the South or the holocaust where millions of Jews were killed at the hands of the Nazi’s just for being Jewish or our treatment of Native Americans and many other examples of irrational, racist acts against people just for being a member of a certain ethnic or religious group.
I agree with President Obama this is not who we are as Americans and should not be who we are as humans, period. What does “give me your tired, your poor, your yearning to be free” really mean? Only those tired and poor who are Christians? We forget that Muslims have been in this country since the beginning, including some of the slaves who were brought from Africa.
I don’t know how to rid our society of what seems to be an insidious and spreading hatred that is like a cancer. I don’t know if there is an equivalent of a chemotherapy or radiation treatment that would at least put these deplorable acts into remission until we could find a permanent cure. I am convinced though, that punishing innocent people based on their heritage or their religion is not the right pill, not the right therapy and will only make the situation worse. The cancer will surely spread the more we take extreme actions, the more we polarize and isolate. Hateful acts beget hatred. It will only incite the ISIS extremists to accelerate their horrible mission of killing Westerners.
I am all for catching and dealing with the bad people because atrocities such as what happened in France last week and earlier in the year, the targeting of the Russian plane two weeks ago, September 11th and so many other attacks cannot continue to be tolerated. I have no problems with a process that does thorough checks for terrorist ties for those wanting to enter the US (I understand such background checks for Syrians are already conducted and are more stringent than for any other immigrant group) and I am sure we can do all of that not at the expense of the good people who simply want to flee the same terrorists that we are suspecting of them being and start over in the land of the free and the home of the brave. All or nothing, zero sum approaches are just not the answer and I am embarrassed to live in a country with so-called leaders who hold such narrow-minded, ill-informed ideas. Where is our sense of reason? Where is our compassion for those who actually hate the terrorist acts as much as we Americans do?
I am a devout Christian and based on my teachings, we would never deny an outstretched hand to those in trouble. We would not judge an entire group on the actions of a few. We would not answer the hatred of the terrorists with more hatred directed towards the innocent.
I implore those who disagree with the stance of rejecting all Syrian refugees to speak up and speak out like a few political leaders such as governors Malloy and Inslee of Connecticut and Washington, respectively, and the Chicago City Council who continue to be open to receiving refugees. There are presumably 16 other states that also will continue to accept Syrian refugees.
