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NOVEMBER 16, 2015

Ted Cruzs Religious Test for Syrian Refugees

BY AMY DAVIDSON

Cruz told reporters that we should accept Christians

from Syria, and only Christians, because there is no
meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE RAEDLE/GETTY

resident Obama and Hillary Clintons idea

that we should bring tens of thousands of
Syrian Muslim refugees to Americait is nothing
less than lunacy, Ted Cruz said on Fox News
(http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/11/15/cruz-bringing-tens-thousands-syrian-refugeesu-s-nothing-less-lunacy), the day after the attacks on Paris. If there are Syrian Muslims
who are really being persecuted, he said, they should be sent to majority-Muslim
countries. Then he reset his eyebrows, which had been angled in a peak of concern, as if
he had something pious to say. And he did: On the other hand, he added, Christians
who are being targeted for genocide, for persecution, Christians who are being beheaded
or crucified, we should be providing safe haven to them. But President Obama refuses to
do that.
The next day, at a middle school in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Cruz spoke even more
openly about those whom he considers to be the good people in the world. He told
reporters that we should accept Christians from Syria, and only Christians, because, he
said, There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. This will
come as a profound surprise to the people of Oklahoma City and Charleston, to all
parties in Ireland, and to the families of the teen-agers whom Anders Breivik killed in
Norway, among many others. The Washington Post noted that Cruz did not say how he
would determine that refugees were Christian or Muslim. Would he accept baptismal
certificates, or notes from pastors? Does he just want to hear the refugees pray?
On Monday, President Barack Obama reacted
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/16/obama-calls-ideaof-screening-syrian-refugees-based-on-religion-shameful-defends-white-housestrategy/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_obama-1148am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory) to this
suggestion with some anger. When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just
admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that
there would be a religious test for which person whos fleeing from a war-torn country is
admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefitted from
protection when they were fleeing political persecution, thats shameful, Obama said.
(That last bit, about families whove benefitted when fleeing persecution, was an

(That last bit, about families whove benefitted when fleeing persecution, was an
unmistakable reference to Cruz and Marco Rubio.) Obama continued, Thats not who
we are. We dont have religious tests to our compassion. The question is whether Obama
can put that compassion to use, in this precipitous moment after Paris, when so many
bad choices will seem appealing, including attacks on our fellow-citizens. (On Monday,
Donald Trump said that, though hed hate to do it, as President he would seriously
consider closing mosques that were viewed as centers of radicalism.) The real criticism is
that the United States has taken so few Syrian refugees of any religionjust about
fifteen hundred, all of whom have been screened by a process that can take up to two
years.
Cruz is cruder than some, but he is not alone among Republicans. On Sunday, Jeb Bush
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/15/jeb-bush-u-sassistance-for-refugees-should-focus-on-christians/) also said that, although he isnt
entirely opposed to helping refugees whod been screened, I think our focus ought to be
on the Christians who have no place in Syria anymore. (Christians were ten per cent of
Syrias population when the civil war broke out.) On Monday morning, Bush spoke
about how we should focus on creating safe havens for refugees in Syria rather than
bringing them all the way across the United Statesa life in no-fly zones, while,
according to a vision Bush also laid out (http://www.newyorker.com/news/johncassidy/jeb-bushs-call-for-war) over the weekend, a major land war involving U.S. troops
was launched around them. He quickly added, But I do think there is a special,
important need to make sure that Syrians are being protected, because they are being
slaughtered in the country and, but for us, whowho would take care of the number of
Christians that right now are completely displaced? Others, like Rubio, have avoided the
Christian question by saying that they dont think we should take refugees at all. Ben
Carson (http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/16/fox-news-sunday-interview-bencarson-should-we-elect-president-no-foreign-policy), speaking to Chris Wallace on Fox
News Sunday, said that taking in refugees from that area of the world, I think, is a huge
mistake. To bring them over here, under these circumstances, is a suspension of
intellect, and would ignore the reason the human brain has these big frontal lobes, as
opposed to other animals. (He then talked at greater length about brain stems.)
Trump, in the past, has claimed that Syrian Muslim refugees can get into America
easily (they cannot), while if youre from Syria and youre Christian you cannot come
into this country (again, not the case). But, mostly, Trump doesnt want to let anybody in,
at least not anybody of the tempest-tossed type. Indeed, its not clear that the talk of
Christian refugees is meant, even by the loudest Republicans, to translate into the
appearance of Syrian Christians in America, as opposed to being an acknowledgment
that some of the crowds that cheer when they hear anti-immigrant rhetoric might have
qualms of conscience. The problem, they can be told, is just that our Muslimsympathizing, cowardly leaders would bring in the wrong refugees.

Christians are in danger in Syria. Their danger is distinct but not unique. The Yazidis, an

Enter

Christians are in danger in Syria. Their danger is distinct but not unique. The Yazidis, an
even more isolated religious minority, have been a particular target of ISIS. Shiites and
Alawites have been targeted, too. Refugee policies have at times rightly recognized the
urgent danger that certain religious or otherwise distinct groups are in, and have properly
responded. This is something quite different than saying, as Cruz does, that being a
Muslim should be a basis for exclusion. Would he let in atheists, for that matter? It seems
strange, when moderate Muslims are trying to distance themselves from a milieu of
terror, that we would insist that such a thing is impossible. There are international and
American laws that recognize people who need protection. There are principles of
common decency which do the same. What they do not do is use faith, or the lack of it,
as a basis for rejection. (America should have let in more Jewish refugees during the
Second World War; that wouldnt have meant turning away Thomas Mann.) And it is a
brutal insult to Syrians who have gone through four and half years of carnage to say that
the fact that they are Sunnis gives them some sort of immunity from ISIS or from the
Assad regime. There are four million Syrian refugees outside of the country now, and
many more inside it. There will likely be some bad people among them. That fact does
not obviate their suffering. Taking more of them in can be an unpopular position at a
moment when the news is full of speculation that one of the Paris attackers had passed
through a refugee camp in Greece with a Syrian passport. But their desperation will not
disappear if we lose interest in it; it may just take a different and more destructive form.
We have a role in deciding where they will go next.
One of the more dishonest aspects of Cruzs comments on Fox was his characterization
of who the Syrian refugees are. He mentioned an estimate that, in the early waves of
refugees entering Europe, seventy-seven per cent of those refugees were young men.
That is a very odd demographic for a refugee wave. Perhaps it would be, if the number
were accurate. A bare majority of the Syrian refugees are women, as FactCheck.org noted
in September, when Ben Carson and Scott Walker raised similar alarms. About twentytwo per cent are men between the ages of eighteen and fifty-ninea broad definition of
young. Cruz is smart enough to know this. He may be referring to a number given for
migrants who arrived in Europe, from nine different countries, by taking a specific,
dangerous Mediterranean sea route in 2014 (seventy-two per cent). Among the two
million Syrian refugees the United Nations has registered in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and
Lebanon, a full thirty-eight per cent are under the age of twelve.
For that matter, why shouldnt there be young men among the refugees? In stories about
why people emigrate (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/ten-borders),
like the one told by Nicholas Schmidle last month in The New Yorker, one reason young
men give as a motivating factor for leaving their countries is the fear of being conscripted
by one side or the other. They dont want to be killed, and they dont want to be killers. Is
it Cruzs view that a nineteen-year-old, just out of high school, should head for the hills,
looking for the moderate Syrian opposition that even the C.I.A. has been unable to find?
Or should he languish in a camp, with no prospects of really settling anywhere, as a target
for the wrong type of tutor? That is not going to make Europe or the United States any

for the wrong type of tutor? That is not going to make Europe or the United States any
safer. What Cruz and the others are saying is that the threat people are living under,
which has been enough to drive them from their homes, should not matter. What does
matter is whether we feel threatened by them.
The other insinuation that Cruz and others are making is that Obama doesnt like
Christians, and refuses to acknowledge the Islamic character of terrorismmaybe, they
suggest, because of his character, or because of who he is. I recognize that Barack
Obama does not wish to defend this country, Cruz said. And saying that was shameful,
too.

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment

contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column
(http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson), in which she covers
war, sports, and everything in between.