Counter
America has undoubtedly faced more Islamic based terrorism than most other western nations, and while we have had to deal with these tragedies and move forward they still leave their impact on the American consciousness. Rafia Zakaria an attorney, human rights activist, and author, examines the effect terror has on Americans view of Islam for the Columbian Journalism Review. He began by recording the use of certain Islamophobic hashtags, google searches, and Facebook posts before and after major terrorist activity. What he found was that after terrorist activity Islamophobic google searches spike, and stay at an elevated level for some time. This effect explains the shift in American sentiment towards refugees following the Paris and San Bernardino attacks. Because of the attacks people are worried that as they let refugees into the country that they are inviting terrorism as well.
These fears are evident in the arguments of those against accepting refugees, an in the case of Andrew McCarthy who makes and argument against refugees in his article, “The Controversy over Syrian Refugees Misses the Question We Should Be Asking” for the National Review. McCarthy explains that, because the refugees come from a volatile region, where much of the worlds Islamic terrorism comes from. He writes, “a background check is only as good as the available information about a person’s background. In refugee pipelines…such information is virtually nonexistent." McCarthy afraid for American citizens after seeing what happened in Paris given our past of being targets for international Islamic terror. It is also understandable that the Department of Homeland Security will have a tough time finding accurate information on people who have left their entire lives behind to flee violence.
However, even with the large amount of fear surrounding this there is much to say against this fear as well. Molly O’Tool in her article,” How Fear Slammed America’s Door on Syrian Refugees”, writing for the Atlantic, she examines the process a refugee must go through before being accepted by a country like the United States. The United States takes all of their refugees recommendations from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who conduct an initial screening of the refugees. Furthermore, if the case has any flag or anything suspicious about them they are delayed indefinitely, and will not be passed on to other nations leading to about half the cases initially received to be screened out. So, most of the refugees we screen have already been screened rigorously by the UN, making the process much more effective in screening for terrorists
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Along with that, it seems that ISIS has also realized that the “refugee method” is not as effective as expected. According to Daniel L. Byman, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, ISIS is in fact advising refugees to not to leave for western countries, and advises “in its online magazine Dabiq and other propaganda organs…the ingathering of Muslims”. He believes that ISIS does not want to target countries through these refugee pipelines, and prefers to incite “home grown terrorism” where they inspire those within the countries to commit these acts. This would mean that a larger importance should be put on countering ISISs propaganda and their message.
As a super power who considers itself to be a world leader the responsibility to help in this conflict falls on us. The United States of all global powers especially cannot maintain a position of neutrality here, we are simply too influential of a nation. We have a responsibility to help where we can, and become the bigger country by confronting out unfounded fears.