Religious Filter? So Be It!

"We have seen countless examples in recent years of people being persecuted for their religious beliefs. We will prioritize persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, those at demonstrated risk, and we will make no apologies for that."
Costas Menegakis, parliamentary secretary, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander

"[Assad is] the only one right now in the whole world who's standing up against the West and the Israelis."
"[Turkey and Lebanon are helping the Syrian opposition because] they want to give a good face to the Israeli lobby, the Jewish lobby."
Reffat A., Montreal protester, October 2011

"I think all the media [CBC, BBC, CNN, France24] have no respect…for the reality and for the truth."
Syrian-Canadian protester, unnamed, Montreal 

Photo, the McGill Daily -- Syrian Canadian protest in defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

"It’s a media war."
"A lot of people just despise the Western media because of the lies. The Western media is not even admitting there are armed gangs [among protesters in Syria]."
Rami Kaplo, Montreal lawyer 

"A lot of these regime figures have a backup plan. With their dual citizenship, they can go back to Canada and other countries if things go wrong."
Faisal Alazem, spokesman, Syrian Canadian Council

Over one thousand Syrian Canadians may still be remaining in Syria after four years of bloody conflict, and despite the rise of the Islamic State. According to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs 1,102 Canadians have registered with them as being in Syria, and of course Canadians do that as a kind of insurance in case they want to call on Canadian authorities to lift them out of a trouble zone they are no longer prepared to cope with. Foreign Affairs feels, however that the number is far greater since registration is purely voluntary.

At the time in 2012 that 1,550 Canadians were registered, officials felt the actual number was closer to five thousand Canadians in the country. Canada closed its Syrian embassy due to security concerns, in March of 2012, was represented by the Hungarian embassy until they closed up shop the same year, and now an agreement has been signed with Romania to represent Canadian consular interests in Syria. Oh, what a tangled web is woven when immigrants from such countries become landed immigrants or have citizenship status.

Syrian Canadian Council spokesman Faisal Alazem feels the majority of those remaining in Syria are dual nationals with loyalty and links to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Reflecting the attitude of many Syrian-Canadians who protested in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada against what they claimed was biased Western coverage of the Syrian government's atrocities committed against Syrian Sunni Muslims.

While the Government of Canada has issued warnings to Canadians not to travel to Syria, government intelligence officials state that at least 30 Canadians have travelled to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham jihadists fighting against the government of Syria, and targeting minority groups and Shiites in their no-holds-barred aspiration to make of the region one unified Islamist caliphate.

Under pressure from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Western countries are being urged to take in tens of thousands of the millions of Syrian refugees who have flooded out of the country in fear of their lives. Canada has been somewhat tardy in pledging and absorbing Syrian refugees, 100,000 of whom the world body seeks to resettle in countries willing to absorb them, by 2017. Fewer than 500 refugees from Syria have been taken in by Canada so far.

Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq have temporarily taken in about three million fleeing Syrians since 2011. With the appearance of the Islamic State and its shotgun approach to mass slaughter, the refugee crisis has only become more acute. Canada has stated vaguely that it plans to commit to absorbing as refugees those Syrians representing minority ethnic and religious communities, even while officially the government denies its interest in aiding only specific groups

Sunni Muslims represent three-quarters of all Syrians; the minority Alawite Shiite Baathist government has traditionally oppressed the majority Sunnis, similar to the situation prevailing now in Iraq and which has led to the success of the Islamic State in that country. Other Muslim groups representing Shias, Alawis and Ismailies represent 16 percent of the population, with Christians and a vanishingly small number of Jews represented by 10 percent.

That Prime Minister Stephen Harper has visited Israel, praised the country and loudly and emotionally announced Canada's support for the country as an ally with common values, has enraged many Canadian Muslims. That Canada will now quietly seek to offer refuge to Syrians other than mainstream Muslims will serve to further alienate them from the government, but that isn't saying too much, given how much he is already loathed by that demographic.

Canada, to be certain, has no need to further upload its society with additional members of a faith whose propensity to slaughter other sects within Islam seems to know no boundaries of human decency. To pretend otherwise, and label those who would far prefer to offer haven to those who will adapt to Canadian society and its values and priorities of human rights entitlements racist represent a discredit to Canadian decency.