Christian minorities forced out of their homes who manage to reach the United States and other Western nations sometimes encounter more trouble – so reports the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council.
In San Diego, California, for example, a group of over 25 Christians who fled the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq were detained for more than six months – until they were finally ordered deported earlier this month. Five of them were arrested for having provided false information, local KPBS Radio reported, but all of them were held at the Otay detention center even as family members protested that they would sponsor them.
“They are being held without a real reason,” said Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community in San Diego, at one of the protests. “They’ve escaped hell. Let’s allow them to reunite with their families.”
Faith McDonnell, of the Institute on Religion Democracy, said that the detainment of Iraqi Christians in San Diego “follows the disturbing pattern that we have seen from the State Department, of ignoring the particular targeting of Christians by ISIS – while giving preferential treatment for asylum to other groups with expedited processing…some of whom could very well be members of jihadist movements.”
In the United Kingdom, Christian leaders are accusing Prime Minister David Cameron of “turning his back” on Christians facing genocide in Syria and Iraq by failing to grant them refuge in the UK – even while thousands of Muslims have been allowed entry.
British publisher and philanthropist Baron Weidenfeld, who himself fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 with the help of British Quakers, said, “Why is it that the Poles and the Czechs are taking in Christian families – and yet the British government stands idly by? Europe must awake and the Conservative British Government should be leading from the front. Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.”
Meanwhile, Gatestone reports, “many of those Christians who are granted asylum in Western countries arrive there only to be further persecuted by Muslim asylum seekers – indicating, once again, who does and who does not really need asylum; who does and who does not assimilate in Western culture.”
Muslims abuse Christians
In Sweden, for instance, two families of Christian asylum-seekers from Syria were recently harassed and abused by approximately 80 Muslim refugees, also from Syria. Both groups resided in the same asylum house, but the Muslims were able to order the Christians not to wear their necklace crosses and not to use the communal areas when in use by Muslims. Finally, fearing the continued intimidation and threats, the Christians managed to leave.
“Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East,” concludes Gatestone, “they are actively supporting it by sponsoring ‘moderate’ rebels who in reality are as ‘radical’ and anti-Western as the Islamic State. And when these persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims – in the Mideast and in the West – are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.”
Incidentally, the seven Gulf States – Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Iraq – have no plans to accept any Syrian refugees.
Kuwaiti researcher Fahd Al-Shelaimi, chairman of the Gulf Forum for Peace and Security, explained recently with a straight face that life is expensive in these countries, thus that it would be cheaper for them to go elsewhere. He also justified this no-entry policy by explaining that the refugees come from a different culture than they would find in the Gulf States.
Saudi Arabia reportedly has 100,000 standing air conditioned tents, empty most of the year, which could house three million people.