SYRIAN REFUGEES ADMITTED TO US SINCE PARIS ATTACK: 602 MUSLIMS, 2 CHRISTIANS

Patrick Goodenough | CNS News - FEBRUARY 16, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: FLICKR, SYRIAFREEDOM.

The government has admitted 605 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the United States since last November’s Paris terrorist attack, two of whom are Christians.

The rest are 589 Sunni Muslims, 10 Shia Muslims, three other Muslims, and one refugee identified in State Department Refugee Processing Center data as “other religion.”

At the same time, the proportion of Christians among the total cohort of Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the conflict began five years ago has now dropped below two percent.

Just 55 Christians (1.9 percent) are among the 2,769 Syrian refugees admitted since March 2011, while a large majority – 2,594 (93.6 percent) – has been Sunni Muslims.

Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population when the civil war began and Sunni Muslims for an estimated 74 percent.

Christians and other non-Muslim minorities have been targeted specifically by ISIS and other radical groups, and monitoring group estimate that more than 700,000 Christians have fled Syria since then.

Other non-Muslims among the Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. since the war began include small numbers of Baha’i (2), Yazidis (1), Jehovah’s Witnesses (8), Zoroastrians (6), atheists (3) and Syrians who have self-identified as having no religion (7).

The administration has rejected calls by some Republican lawmakers, andsome GOP presidential candidates, for Syrian Christians to be prioritized in the refugee admission process.

The ISIS terrorist attack in Paris on November 13 fueled concerns that the terrorist group was exploiting the flow of refugees and migrants as cover to send jihadists into the West to carry out attacks.

French authorities said two of the attackers had been carrying fake Syrian passports and warned European Union partners that “some terrorists are trying to get into our countries and commit criminal acts by mixing in with the flow of migrants and refugees.”

Last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper affirmed during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that ISIS has done so.

“Isn’t it already proven that Mr. Baghdadi is sending people with this flow of refugees that are terrorists that – in order to inflict further attacks on Europe and the United States?” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked him, referring to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“That’s correct,” Clapper replied. “That’s one technique they’ve used is taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow.”

In addition, he continued, ISIS has become “pretty skilled at [producing] phony passports, so they can travel ostensibly as legitimate travelers as well.”

In December, House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said the U.S. intelligence community “has identified already individuals tied to terrorist organizations in Syria that want to exploit and get into the United States through the refugee process.”

Feds: Dearborn Hts. man supports ISIS, planned attack

Detroit News | Mark Hicks | February 6, 2016

Federal authorities are accusing a Dearborn Heights man of supporting Islamic State extremists and planning to “shoot up” a Detroit church.

Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, hasn’t been charged with terrorism-related crimes but faces federal charges of illegally having a firearm while using a controlled substance.

But a complaint unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court reveals the FBI has been investigating him since May “regarding increasingly violent threats he has made to others about committing acts of terror and martyrdom — including brutal acts against police officers, churchgoers and others — on behalf of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.”

Besides allegedly using Twitter to express support for the terror group — often referred to as ISIS or ISIL — Abu-Rayyan reportedly told an undercover FBI employee about a plot to target a church.

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan is quoted as saying in court records. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day, and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.”

Investigators didn’t name the church Abu-Rayyan allegedly eyed, but claim the property covers about two blocks less than half a mile from his work and can accommodate up to 6,000 members. He allegedly purchased a gun and told an undercover FBI employee that attacking a church would be “easy.”

“A lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church,” the affidavit quotes him as saying. “Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. (If I) can’t go do jihad at the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

Abu-Rayyan appeared in federal court Thursday and was detained pending a hearing on Monday, said Gina Balaya, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

Court records show he was assigned a federal defender, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night. Messages left for those listed as his relatives were not returned.

“If the allegations are true, then they’re extremely troublesome,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter.

He said the group is urging caution “and encouraging the broader community to also reserve judgment regarding this matter.”

The court document claims Abu-Rayyan used Twitter for “retweeting, liking and commenting” on IS propaganda since late 2014. According to the affidavit, the posts included “video of a Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive, men being thrown from a high rise building to execute them, the beheading of Christians in Egypt and news of ISIL victories.”

In December, he communicated with an undercover FBI employee through social media; during conversations over several weeks, “Abu-Rayyan consistently expressed support for ISIL and repeatedly expressed his desire to commit a martyrdom operation,” the document read. He also said he had an AK-47 with a 40-round magazine like other extremist fighters.

The affidavit says Abu-Rayyan told the undercover FBI employee a firearm he bought in October wasn’t suitable “because it only held six shots and he would have to keep reloading.”

The next month, he “tweeted photos of himself firing an AK-47 type and AR-15 type rifles at a local firing range”; one was captioned “Sahwat hunting,” which authorities said “is a term for Iraqis who oppose ISIL.”

Federal officials said Abu-Rayyan bought a .22 caliber revolver in October from a Dearborn Heights sporting goods store but lacked a concealed pistol license. On Oct. 7, Detroit police pulled him over for speeding; inside the 2001 Buick Century, officers found marijuana. Arrested for toting the drug and carrying a concealed weapon, Abu-Rayyan was later released on bond.

On Nov. 15, the same day the pending case denied him the chance to buy another pistol, Abu-Rayyan rented a firearm at the firing range pictured on Twitter later that month, according to the affidavit.

Wayne County prosecutors charged him for the gun and marijuana; he pleaded guilty to the drug possession Jan. 15 and was scheduled for trial Feb. 16 on the weapon charge, authorities said.

Soon after he pleaded guilty, Abu-Rayyan told the undercover person he “wanted to kill the officer who arrested him.” Since the officer’s heart attack delayed a trial, Abu-Rayyan “wanted to do a martyrdom operation at the hospital, killing the police officer in the process,” according to court documents. The next day, he told the undercover FBI employee about carrying a “large knife or sword in his car” in case of a fight and said “it is my dream to behead someone,” documents allege.

The case coincides with Muslims in Michigan and nationwide facing tensions amid fears about rising extremism in the wake of the recent Paris and California attacks.

“We advise people not to jump to conclusions about what happened and wait for all of the facts to come in,” said Muzammil Ahmed, board chairman for the Michigan Muslim Community Council. “Our thoughts are with our Christian friends and congregation that were threatened. We think that isolated acts like this, if they are indeed true, are an anomaly in this area.”

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved GOP legislation that erected fresh hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States. Gov. Rick Snyder suspended efforts to open Michigan to Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war, joining other governors in asking the federal government to examine and toughen security screenings of refugee applicants.

Soon after the shootings in San Bernardino, California, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. — a call that drew rebukes from many, yet found support among others.

CAIR’s national chapter noted that in his visit to a Baltimore-area mosque this week, President Barack Obama rejected “inexcusable political rhetoric” targeting Muslims.

OBAMA SETTING UP AN INVASION HAVEN

Jon Bowne | Infowars | FEBRUARY 5, 2016

Recently, Obama stirred the pot of intolerance at a Baltimore Mosque.

The Obama administration would have us all believe his speech is a needed effort to assure Muslim Americans that they will not be subjected to bigotry, while he shepherds in Syrian refugees into small towns to fuel sharia no go areas akin to the rape and murder invasion being waged on Europe.