In a bombshell email from September 2008, advisers to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign consciously decided to choose Arab Muslims over Arab Christians in suggesting top staff positions should Obama win the White House. The email was released by WikiLeaks in its latest series, “The Podesta Emails.”
Former New York Solicitor General Preeta D. Bansal sent the email to Michael Froman, a classmate of Obama’s at Harvard and a member of the 12-person advisory board for the Obama campaign’s transition team. The email came with “the compiled lists of Asian American and Muslim American candidates for top Administration jobs, sub-cabinet jobs, and outside boards/agencies/policy committees.”
The key reveal comes in this passage:
In the candidates for top jobs, I excluded those with some Arab American background but who are not Muslim (e.g., George Mitchell). Many Lebanese Americans, for example, are Christian. In the last list (of outside boards/commissions), most who are listed appear to be Muslim American, except that a handful (where noted) may be Arab American but of uncertain religion (esp. Christian).
This suggests the Obama campaign’s transition team aimed to hire Muslims over Christians, or at the very least that in the interests of diversity, the team was willing to give preferential treatment to Muslim Arabs rather than Christian Arabs. The emphasis on adherence to Islam is significant, given other troubling aspects of the Obama administration.
Of the Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in September 2016, 98.9 percent were Muslim (1825 refugees), as compared to only 1.1 percent non-Muslim (22 refugees). Over the whole year, non-Muslim Syrian refugee admissions account for less than one percent (0.8) overall, with 11,818 Muslims and only 95 non-Muslims.
According to The Gulf/2000 Project at Columbia University, the religious breakdown of the Syrian population from 2008-2009 shows that non-Muslims made up a great deal more than 0.8 percent of the population. At that time, Syria had 73 percent Sunni Muslims (15.98 million people), 14.7 percent Shiite Muslims (3.29 million people), 9.3 percent Christians (2.04 million people), and 2.7 percent other religions (590,000 people). How does 12 percent become 0.8 percent? Could religious preference be involved?
Source: PJMedia
