Obama’s Fallacious “Religious Test” Argument
17th November 2015
In response to the idea that the U.S. should limit the flow of Syrian refugees into this country to Christians, President Obama had this to say:
That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have a religious test for our compassion.
This sounds good in the abstract. For at least two reasons, however, it is not a persuasive objection to limiting entry to Christians.
First, Syrian Christians face persecution from ISIS based on their religion. Syrian Sunnis do not. If ISIS conquers their town, they will not be slaughtered because of who they are. Christians are likely to be. (Alawites might be, but they can relocate to areas controlled by the Assad regime; there is no need for them to leave Syria).
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Second, in its radical form, Islam is a militant, murderous political movement. It may well be that only a small percentage of the Muslims fleeing Syria subscribe to, or are even sympathetic with, this movement. However, we can’t tell which ones are and which ones aren’t. Our intelligence services have no comprehensive list of ISIS adherents and sympathizers in Syria.
Obama keeps going out of his way to demonstrate that he is an ignorant amateur floundering in the deep end of a pool with which he is entirely unacquainted.