There's been a certain amount of hyperbole on this blog of late regarding refugees from Syria. This has been somewhat unavoidable, given the fact that virtually every day over the past week some monstrous new outrage has been perpetrated by Muslim radicals somewhere across the globe.
So it must be said that, of course, not every Muslim is a terrorist. But it must also be admitted that Western nations will not merely be accepting "widows and orphans." It is therefore inevitable that there will be some finite number of terrorists mingled within the cohort of refugees that are granted asylum. So the question is: How can we estimate this number?
Fortunately, this poll from the Doha Institute can give us a general idea. The following chart illustrates the number of Syrian refugees who have a favorable view of the Islamofascist group known as ISIS:
(Image from page 19 of "The Military Campaign Against The Islamic State In Iraq And The Levant: Arab Public Opinion")
As can be seen, 13% of Syrian refugees have a favorable or partly favorable view of ISIS. If America accepts 10,000 Syrian refugees, 1,300 of them will view the terrorist group favorably to some extent. I contend that, at the very least, such views will not be conducive to good citizenship among these thirteen hundred people.
(Obviously, the situation faced by Germany is far worse, which can expect 104,000 of 800,000 Syrian refugees to have somewhat favorable views of ISIS.)
However, only 4% of Syrian refugees view ISIS with full approval, so America can expect to receive only 400 hardcore ISIS supporters. (While Germany faces the nightmarish prospect of receiving 32,000 ISIS partisans concentrated within a far smaller geographical area — a veritable small invasion force, should it ever be so motivated.)
But most likely, support for ISIS will not translate into action for the vast majority of even hardcore supporters, so only a small fraction of America's 400 (or Germany's 32,000) can be expected to turn to terrorism.
I'm tempted to put that fraction at 1%, but that would simply be a wild guess.
POSTSCRIPT: The above analysis makes a number of assumptions:
1) There are no ISIS infiltrators mingled in with genuine refugees. I believe there will most certainly be a few, but I have no basis whatsoever for estimating their number.
2) The refugees have zero support for other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or al-Nusra. It is clearly nonsensical to suppose so, but the poll did not ask refugees whether they supported other terrorist groups, and more importantly, the refugees were not asked about their support for ALL terrorist groups in general.
Given that al-Qaeda & al-Nusra is said to be more popular that ISIS among Syrian refugees, I think it reasonable to add 25% to the final numbers (425 hardcore terrorist supporters in the U.S., and 40,000 in Germany).
(If I was hyping the numbers I suppose I could double them, but it must be remembered that a large number of ISIS supporters will most likely view al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups favorably as well. Due to the considerable overlap, the stated additional 25% seems more reasonable.)
3) Governments are completely ineffective in screening against ISIS supporters. An indeterminate number will no doubt be weeded out, should members of the bureaucracy be inclined to do so.
However, I'm left with a disquieting thought: In some PC quarters, firebrands and holders of extreme views are thought to represent a more "authentic" (and therefore, more desirable) type of Islam. And so I ask: Is it possible that portions of the bureaucracy might in fact positively select IN FAVOR of individuals predisposed to conducting terrorist acts against their newly adopted countries?
UPDATE (November 21, 2015): Greek security forces insist discerning terrorists from legitimate refugees is almost impossible.
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