Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute: Documented: Obama’s “Traditional Muslim Bias” against Christians

Documented: Obama’s “Traditional Muslim Bias” against Christians
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/November 03/16

Those Arabs from nations with large Christian populations or with Christian names failed the Obama team’s “religious tests.”

The Obama government’s bias against Mideast Christians closely resembles the traditional bias Christian minorities experience at the hands of Muslim governments.

When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has been called out at least twice for denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.

When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for months and then sent back to the countries persecuting them, possibly to be enslaved, raped, or murdered.

When the Nigerian government waged an offensive against Boko Haram — another Islamic group that regularly slaughters and rapes Christians and burn their churches — and killed some of its terrorists, John Kerry fumed and called for the “human rights” of the jihadis.

It is against Islamic law to side with “infidels” against Muslims.

Almost a year ago, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama called the suggestion that the U.S. give preference to Christian refugees over Muslim refugees “shameful.” “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he added loftily.

Now, WikiLeaks has released a 2008 email which discusses who should fill top staff positions should Obama win the presidency: it clearly proves that the Obama administration has long used “religious tests” — but to discriminate against Christians in favor of Muslims

The email was sent from former New York Solicitor General Preeta D. Bansal to Michael Froman, a classmate of Obama’s at Harvard and a member of the 12-person advisory board for the Obama campaign’s transition team. The key passage reads:

In the candidates for top jobs, I excluded those with some Arab American background but who are not Muslim (e.g., George Mitchell). Many Lebanese Americans, for example, are Christian. In the last list (of outside boards/commissions), most who are listed appear to be Muslim American, except that a handful (where noted) may be Arab American but of uncertain religion (esp. Christian).

In other words, those Arabs from nations with large Christian populations or with Christian names failed the Obama team’s “religious tests.”

The discrimination is not limited just to top or prestigious jobs. Even in life and death situations, the Obama administration massively favors Muslims over Christians. Despite the U.S. government’s acknowledgement that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians in Syria — meaning that Christians, not Sunni Muslims, are being targeted for torture, slavery and death due solely to their religious identity — statistics repeatedly show that the Obama administration has taken in a vastly disproportionate number of Sunni Muslims into the U.S.

When war erupted in Syria in 2011, approximately 75% of the population was Sunni Muslim and 10% Christian. If the U.S. were to admit Christian refugees in proportion to their population in Syria, about 1,260 Christians would by now have been resettled in the U.S. — when in fact only 68 were. Sunni Muslims are only 75% percent of Syria’s population but 99% of those received by the U.S.

Even the 1951 Refugee Convention lists five criteria that qualify applicants for refugee status: persecution for reasons of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. Christians very clearly fit one of the criteria — religious persecution — whereas most of the Sunni Muslims entering America do not.

This discrepancy is no secret. Most recently, in an FOIA lawsuit filed by a federal appellate court against the Department of Homeland Security, Judge Daniel Manion wrote about his

“concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country…. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian…. To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy.”

Far from being an aberration, the WikiLeaks revelation is simply the latest indicator that the Obama administration favors Muslims over Christians:

When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has been called out at least twice for denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.
When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the countries persecuting them, possibly to be enslaved, raped, or murdered.
When the Nigerian government waged a strong offensive against Boko Haram — another Islamic group that regularly slaughters and rapes Christians and burn their churches — and killed some of its terrorists, John Kerry fumed and called for the “human rights” of the jihadis.
When Egypt’s persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution back in 2013, the U.S. said no.
When persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians asked for arms to join the opposition fighting ISIS, D.C. refused.
When the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the genocide against Christians and other minorities, although “many high level delegations from UN member states addressed the Security Council meeting, some at the Foreign Minister level, the United States failed to send … a high ranking member of the State Department.”

When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the countries persecuting them, possibly to be enslaved, raped, or murdered. Pictured above: Members of California’s Iraqi Christian community and their supporters protest the months-long detention of Iraqi Christian asylum-seekers at the Otay Mesa detention center. (Image source Al Jazeera video screenshot)

Perhaps the most significant aspect of all this is that the Obama government’s bias against Mideast Christians closely resembles the traditional bias Christian minorities experience at the hands of Muslim governments. There are active and passive persecutors of Christians in the Muslim world. Muslim criminals, mobs, and terrorists actively persecute Christians, while Muslim governments passively enable them: when Muslims kidnap, rape, or kill Christians and destroy their churches, Muslim authorities rarely if ever do anything about it (it is against Islamic law to side with “infidels” against Muslims). Christian minorities in nations such as Egypt and Pakistan know this well. Muslim governments seldom if ever hire Christians to positions of authority (Islamic law bans the intentional placement of an “infidel” over a Muslim).

From preferring Muslims over Christians for positions of authority, to preferring Muslim refugees over Christian minorities – who are currently experiencing genocide — the Obama government’s bias against Christian “infidels” and favor for Muslims is identical to the behavior of Muslim governments.

To use the president’s words, it is the Obama administration’s own policies that are “shameful,” that are “not American,” and that do not represent “who we are.”

Raymond Ibrahim is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (published by Regnery with Gatestone Institute, April 2013).

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