The disparity in numbers is just too glaring: Out of the 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this fiscal year, a whopping majority of them —12,486, or 98.2 percent, to be exact—are Muslims, with the remaining 68, constituting just half of 1 percent of the total, belonging to the Christian faith, CNS News reports.
This wide gap in numbers prompted Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch to remark that what the Obama administration did was "social engineering" and not really a genuine response to the refugee crisis in Syria.
Records show that when the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the Syrian population of 21.96 million comprised of 74 percent Sunni Muslim and 10 percent Christian.
Spencer contends that the Syrian refugees who were resettled in the U.S. should thus be at least 10 percent Christian.
The fact that Christians accounted for less than 1 percent of the refugees admitted into the U.S. showed that President Obama "is clearly pursuing a strategy to increase the Muslim population of the U.S.," Spencer says.
"He may be doing this out of the confidence that they will vote Democrat, or because he thinks an increased Muslim population in the U.S. will end 'Islamophobia,' or for some other reason, even possibly including a generally positive view of Muslims and of the putative benefits of Islam for a society, coming from his upbringing," he adds.
CNS News reports that the total of 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. in the just-ended fiscal year exceeded the target Obama declared last fall by 2,587 (20.5 percent).
Of this number, the vast majority are Sunni Muslims – 12,363 – while another 103 are identified as simply as Muslims while 20 are tagged as Shi'a Muslims, according to data gathered at the State Department Refugee Processing Center.
Of the 68 Christian refugees, 16 are Catholics, eight Orthodox, five Protestants, four Jehovah's Witnesses, one Greek Orthodox, and 34 refugees self-identified simply as Christians.
The rest of the Syrian refugees resettled in the U.S. in fiscal year 2016 are 24 Yazidis, eight refugees with religion given as "other," and one with "no religion."
