The West Turns Back on Persecuted Christians, Embraces Radical Muslims

Western authorities appear committed to discriminating against Christian asylum seekers, while welcoming Muslims ones.

Most recently, Germany — which has taken in millions of refugees from the Muslim world, including many, non-vetted, from Afghanistan — denied refuge to an Iranian convert to Christianity, known by the initials "H.H.," whose brother-in-law had been imprisoned, tortured and killed after converting in their native Iran. According to a report from August 2:

"When H.H.'s asylum application was rejected by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, he appealed to the Administrative Court of Greifswald. But the court dismissed H.H.'s claim, declaring that it was "not particularly likely" that a Muslim would decide to become a Christian after his brother-in-law had been tortured and killed and his wife abused. It is more likely 'to assume that the events described, if they actually took place, have a deterrent effect on third parties,' according to the administrative court..."Recently, the European Court of Human Rights refused to hear Hassan. Now he faces deportation to a country where conversions can be punished with imprisonment."

Discussing H.H.'s case, a legal officer at ADF International (Alliance Defending Freedom), Lidia Rieder, said: "Iran is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for Christians, and converts are particularly at risk. In the last year, religious persecution has greatly worsened. So-called 'religious deviants' can be given prison sentences, national security charges are continuously used to target religious minorities. The courts in Germany must take this into account when processing asylum applications."

Germany and the European Court of Human Rights are hardly the only ones to deny refuge to, or discriminate against, persecuted Christians. Over the years, many other Western entities have engaged in similar behavior.

Under the presidency of Barack Obama, particularly during the refugee crisis precipitated by the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), the White House and State Department were accused of all sorts of discriminatory measures against Christians — to the point that a federal appellate court filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in late 2016. In it, Judge Daniel Manion expressed his "concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country”: "Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.... To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy."

The discrepancy in numbers was even more perplexing: Although the U.S. government had acknowledged that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians in Syria due solely to their religious identity, it took in only those who by definition were not in any way being targeted by ISIS — Sunni Muslims, with whom ISIS, a Sunni organization, identifies and does not attack. Despite the fact that Sunnis were about 75% of Syria's population, and Christians about 10%, a full 99 % of those brought into America were Sunni Muslims, and less than 0.5 percent were Christian.

As CNS news noted in 2016: "Record 499 Syrian Refugees Admitted to US So Far in May Includes No Christians." In other words, even if one were to operate under the assumption that refugee status should have been made available to all Syrians, regardless of religion, there should have been 20 times more Christians and about one-quarter fewer Sunnis granted refugee status under Obama.

A virtually identical situation prevailed in the United Kingdom. In 2019, The Times stated that the UK "fails to give safe haven to Christians," and "appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims" instead of Christians.

Once again, statistics confirm that allegation: "out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19010/persecuted-christians-radical-muslims