Family Research Council falsely accusing Obama of discriminating against Christian refugees

There is no doubt that the situation involving the Syrian refugees has caused much controversy due to the attacks on Paris. Much of the controversy has to do with the fact that even though the perpetrators were identified as European nationals, many conservatives, GOP members, and religious right figures have exploited the situation to demonize not only the Syrian refugees but also those who practice Islam.

We've even had some folks, including presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, offer the idea that only Christian Syrian refugees should be admitted because - as the more coarse of their colleagues put it - "only Muslims are looking to harm people."

To accentuate that mindset comes a new, but callously inaccurate spin which accuses President Obama of favoring Muslim refugees over Christian refugees. And who else is helping to forward this lie but none other than Tony Perkins and the  Family Research Council.

Taking parts of an article from a conservative news source, CNSNews, Perkins sent the following in an email:

If President Obama thinks a religious test is shameful for refugees, then he has a lot to be ashamed of. His own administration has been discriminating at an amazingly fast clip over the past two months -- and against the population posing the smallest threat to American safety: Christians.

After its jaw-dropping findings earlier this week, CNSNews also crunched the numbers from the last month and a half and found the same disgraceful pattern of prejudice. Of the Syrians granted asylum in the U.S. since October, only five were Christians. The other 346 were Sunni Muslims (which, for those of you keeping score at home, is 98.6%). If that isn't a "religious test," I don't know what is. And the tragedy is this: not only do Christian refugees pose the least risk to American society, but they're also the ones in the direst need of help.

"While there is no question that ISIS will kill and persecute Muslims whom it regards as apostates for refusing to adhere to its construction of Islam," writes Andrew McCarthy at NRO, "it is abject idiocy to suggest that Muslims are facing the same ubiquity and intensity of persecution as Christians. And it is downright dishonest to claim that taking such religious distinctions into account is 'not American,' let alone 'shameful.' How can something American law requires be un-American?"

The article FRC is referring to was questioning the entire process in which refugees are accepted, but it never accuse  the Obama Administration of being discriminatory. FRC omitted the following contained in the article:

President Obama said Monday that calls from some quarters for the U.S. to admit only Christian refugees from Syria were “shameful,” yet the reality is that today’s refugee system discriminates, not against Syrian Muslims, but against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities.

Critics say this is because the federal government relies on the United Nations in the refugee application process – and since Syrian Christians are often afraid to register with the U.N., they and other non-Muslims are left out. Fleeing persecution at the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other jihadist groups, Syrian Christians generally avoid U.N. refugee camps because they are targeted there too. Most refugees considered for resettlement in the U.S. are referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Applications are then handled by one of nine State Department-managed resettlement support centers around the world, a process that includes vetting and interviews by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and takes an average of 18-24 months. There are occasions when a process can begin without UNHCR referral, but this usually applies in cases of close relatives of refugees already in the U.S. 

Is the CNSNews article accurate? I don't know, but I am sure that more details will be forthcoming as to the process in which the United States accepts refugees. But one thing is clear. The Family Research Council is doing some heavy un-Christian spinning.

Just as it distorts and spins lies against the lgbt community, the Family Research Council seems to be doing the same in order to imply that this country should only admit Syrian Christians refugees.

In some entities, tragedies and crisis situations seem to bring out the best. Unfortunately in the case of the Family Research Council, we are clearly seeing vile on top of vile
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Related post: The so-called Christian group Family Research Council supports abandoning Syrian refugees