It would be a shame if public policy were formed as a knee-jerk reaction to a tragic event. But that seems to be the nature of recent calls to ban Syrian refugees from coming to the United States. So far, there is no evidence any of the Paris attackers were refugees. In fact, there has never been an act of terrorism committed by a refugee in the U.S.
In September, a photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach shocked the world. Kurdi’s family had been trying to flee the Islamic State when their inflatable boat capsized en route from Turkey to Greece.
The lack of compassion for millions of Syrian refugees like Kurdi is astonishing.
Christians especially should sympathize with the plight of Syrian refugees. Jesus was at one point a refugee, after all — when his family fled to Egypt.
“After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,’ the angel said. ‘Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him,'” reads the New Living Translation of Matthew’s Gospel. King Herod was disturbed by Jesus being the newborn king of the Jews, and set out to kill “all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under.”
The Bible is full of scriptures that call Christians to willingly and cheerfully help the downtrodden — including those who are of less than perfect moral virtue: “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you,” the Gospel of Luke reads.
At the Last Judgement, Jesus says he will invite the righteous into heaven, telling them, “I was a stranger and you invited me in.” The Apostle James writes that “to visit orphans and widows in their affliction” falls under the definition of “religion that is pure and undefiled before God.”
And to be clear, the scriptures don’t say “help the downtrodden, but only if they’re Christian.”
“You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way,” Exodus tells us. “Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.” And just as the Israelites’ ancestors were foreigners in Egypt, most Americans’ ancestors were foreigners when they arrived in the U.S.
Obviously, today’s situation is a complicated one, and charity does not require a lack of common sense. Moral reassurances from the scriptures do not change the fact that taking in more Syrian refugees could slightly increase vulnerability to Islamic terrorism. But let’s not exaggerate that risk, either. In the post-Sept. 11 world the odds of dying from an Islamic terrorist attack in the U.S. remain miniscule — you’re literally more likely to get hit by lightning.
More than 200,000 murders occurred in the U.S. from 2002 to 2014. Fewer than 30 of those were the result of Islamic terrorism.
Also keep in mind that refugees undergo the strictest security check of anyone who travels to the U.S. for any reason, according to the State Department. The process is stricter than for tourists or student visas, but no one is trying to curb these after the Paris attacks. Preferences are already given for women, children, families, torture victims and members of persecuted religions. In-person interrogations are conducted. Given the large number of applicants, officials can choose to admit those about whom we have the best documentation, to rule out any furtive terrorist or Islamic State affiliation. As for those with known terrorist ties, we have processes to screen them out relatively easily. The Paris attacker who entered Europe on a fake Syrian passport would not have held up under the scrutiny of the U.S. refugee process.
“Don’t be selfish … Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves,” Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians. “Don’t look out for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.”
The 10,000 refugees Obama wants to take in will not be a large burden on our nation. They represent a small fraction of the refugees we already admit annually. What’s more, there are more infants born in the U.S. every single day.
We must not overreact to the terrorism in Paris by turning our backs on Syrian refugees who are running for their lives from the same enemy that carried out that murderous plot. As Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans, “Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
