Are Syrian Refugees Analogous to Jewish Ones? Does It Matter?
This article is a response to “An Answer to ‘No, Muslim Refugees Are Not Jewish WWII Refugees’” by Madison Trice
There is a point I must make before I begin this article: on the issue of accepting refugees, I am of an extremely mixed mind. I’d like to do more research on the crisis as a whole, but for this article, my primary point isn’t whether or not we should be accepting Muslim refugees. The point I will make in this article is that, regardless of what action we should take, Muslim refugees are not analogous to Jewish Holocaust refugees. This article, which I write at risk of creating a never ending answer-ception, is a response to a previous Pensive article: “An Answer to ‘No, Muslim Refugees Are Not Jewish WWII Refugees.’” Let’s begin.
1. The first point the author makes is the oft cited statistic that 94 percent of terrorist attacks are committed by non-Muslims. This is an important statistic, especially in a country whose media might reflect that nearly all terrorists are Muslim. However, Muslims make up only one percent of America, so the fact that they commit six percent of terrorist acts in America is concerning, as it shows that they commit terrorism at six times the rate of the average American. That said, this is still a tiny portion of the Muslim population, and in my opinion, not generally reflective of American Muslims.
2 and 4. The second point is very interesting. The author argues that Muslim majority nations won’t necessarily be hospitable to Muslims. The veracity of this claim is uncertain, but let’s focus on a term she used: Muslim majority nations. Earlier in the article, the author drew up a similarity between Jews and Muslims in that they are both religious minorities. This is partially true. Obviously, both Muslims and Jews are religious minorities in America, the nation to which Jewish refugees fled and Syrian Muslim refugees are attempting to flee. The difference is that the Syrian refugees live in a country where their demographic is a majority, and are surrounded by countries in which their demographic is the majority. Jews during the Holocaust in Europe were not the majority in any of the countries. This difference is very important. The war in Syria and the killings by both ISIS and the Assad regime are truly horrific and cannot be tolerated. The human toll is devastating. However, body counts aside, neither ISIS nor Assad is trying to exterminate Syrian Muslims, whereas the Third Reich had the express goal of exterminating all Jews. The Syrians dying in this war are members of a majority group who are being killed in the crossfire. The Jews who were killed in Germany were members of a minority group whose government was making a purposeful attempt to exterminate them. The dynamic between ISIS and Syrians is nothing like that between Jews and Nazis, and the proof is in the pudding: as the author states in her fourth point, 13 percent of Syrians support ISIS. Clearly, this is not the majority, and there are probably a ton of extenuating circumstances, but nonetheless, this is a concerning statistic. And it is a lot higher than the zero percent of Jews who supported the Nazis in Germany.
3. There are ideological differences between Judaism and Islam, but these differences are not necessarily what makes the Jewish and Muslim refugee situations so different. The important difference, which does, in fact, factor heavily into assimilation, is that European Jews practiced their Judaism in secular societies similar to the United States, whereas Syrian refugees are practicing Islam in a theocracy that is inherently different from the U.S. It is not a question of Jewish vs. Muslim so much as a question of secular vs. non-secular.
5. Are Muslims too often victims of hate crimes in America? Yes. Is this comparable to the treatment of Jews in America in the 1940s? No. In fact, it’s not even as bad as the treatment of Jews in America today. Jews, despite being one percent of the U.S. population, constitute the majority of religious hate crime victims in this country. Moreover, a demographic can contain both victims and perpetrators. Obviously, the anti-Muslim attacks that the author mentioned are unacceptable and must be kept in mind. But so do the assaults in Cologne, the bombings in Brussels and Istanbul, and the mass shooting in Paris. These things simply weren’t a problem with Jewish refugees.
The question is, how does all this affect the refugee situation? I do not believe that the Refugee Crisis is even somewhat analogous to the Holocaust. But I also don’t think it needs to be. People in Syria are suffering and dying. Whether the pain and suffering is similar to that of my ancestors isn’t that important to me. We should look at the Refugee Crisis as its own event, not as a sequel to the Holocaust. Comparing the two events amounts to little more than a pissing contest, a “who had it worse” Olympics. And I just don’t think that’s productive.
