Turning back Syrian refugees isn't just wrong — it helps ISIS
As French authorities combed an area just outside the Stade de France, where on Friday night a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest meant for the crowd of thousands just inside, they found a small object that has since become the subject of enormous international attention: a Syrian passport.
Greek authorities said that a month earlier, a man traveling under the same name as on the passport had been registered as entering Greece through the island of Leros. They took fingerprints at the time, which match those on the suicide bomber.
The passport, French officials found, was fake. Nevertheless, the discovery has revived the specter of terrorists posing as refugees infiltrating the West and renewed calls to close the borders and refuse entry to all Syrian refugees — or at least all the Muslim ones. At least 23 US governors said on Monday that they'd attempt to block any efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in their states, and the few Republican presidential candidates who didn't outright declare that all Syrian refugees should be banned from entering the United States suggested that only Christian refugees should be allowed in.
But such reactions play right into ISIS's hands.
ISIS despises Syrian refugees: It sees them as traitors to the caliphate. By leaving, they turn their back on the caliphate. ISIS depicts its territory as a paradise, and fleeing refugees expose that as a lie. But if refugees do make it out, ISIS wants them to be treated badly — the more the West treats them with suspicion and fear, the more it supports ISIS's narrative of a West that is hostile to Muslims and bolsters ISIS's efforts to recruit from migrant communities in Europe.
The fewer refugees the West lets in, and the chillier their welcome on arrival, the better for ISIS.
http://www.vox.com/world/2015/11/17/9747042/paris-attacks-isis-refugees
Charlie Winter @charliewinter
Why would a jihadist who expressly rejects all notions of modern citizenship take his passport on a suicide mission?
So it gets found.
3:26 AM - 15 Nov 2015
