My Nov. 25, 2015 column “Refujihad” pointed out that most of the Muslim asylum seekers flooding into Europe are men, with very few women and children. It also offered United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees statistics supporting that observation. Further, it pointed to video evidence that the male refugees are overwhelmingly of military age, although UNHCR does not furnish an age breakdown.
The column’s conclusion was that our administration should at least reconsider its plans to admit Middle-Eastern refugees. Better, that it should admit only the most vulnerable to persecution. “Accept those least problematic and most deserving of asylum---Christians, Muslim women and kids. Turn away those least deserving---military-age Muslim males.”
As if to underscore my point, along came the New Years Eve rampages in several European cities. The worst of it was in Cologne, where bands of young Middle-Eastern men sexually assaulted and robbed German women. In that town alone, 553 attacks in that one night were reported. The Cologne police chief was fired after it was exposed that the police had initially tried to cover up that the attackers were refugees. Now Chancellor Merkel’s uber-liberal refugee policy is deservedly under fire and under reconsideration. But I digress---so back to the women and children.
In the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, at least one of the terrorists was found to have infiltrated Europe as a Syrian asylum seeker. Some Republicans suggested that it might be imprudent to admit Syrian refugees to the U.S. Ignoring the facts and typically mocking his political opponents, President Obama said “Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans…”
Perhaps President Obama had forgotten that in 2011 his own State Department had put a six-month hold on processing Iraqi asylum requests in order to have time to review screening procedures. The reason for the halt was that two previously-admitted asylum seekers were found by the FBI to have been connected to IED attacks against American troops in Iraq. So pause-and-take-a-breath was acceptable to the President in 2011 but not in an analogous situation in 2015.
The Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino has caused me to retreat from my earlier conclusion: “Accept those least problematic and most deserving of asylum---Christians, Muslim women and kids.”
One of the San Bernardino attackers (perhaps even the leader) was a woman. A woman with a six-month old child, at that. And of course there have been female suicide bombers in the Middle East. So we need to face the fact that women can be jihadis, too.
So I revise my Nov. 25 conclusion. Here’s the revision: Accept those least problematic and most deserving of asylum---Christians and orphaned children.
Skip the hijabis.
