My heart is aching right now for the people of France. My Parisian room mate is in tears as she frantically calls everyone she knows but hasn’t heard from all her friends yet.
I don’t want to get political on this blog, but sometimes events like this one call for it.
I have now read several comments, and there will probably be many more, blaming the refugee situation in Europe for the latest spree of attacks on the French capital. They say, adamantly, that “this is why we shouldn’t help the refugees”. Terrorists are taking advantage of the movement of thousands of people and escaping the filters.
This, of course, can happen. Bad people can slip through the gaps of people who only want to live or see their children survive. But how can anyone say that the refugees should not be entitled to help? To say that 140 lives may or may not have been saved tonight – how many more lives would be lost if no one was helping the Syrians? How many lives are ALREADY being lost because of particular countries closing their borders?
We are all human. The Syrians deserve their lives as much as the French.
But what really gets me about these wild accusations and irreverent notions, is that assuming these attacks have even come from certain terrorist groups (and there is no word either way yet, so they already are assumptions) – Syrians are running from the SAME people. We are all in this world together.
Meanwhile, America suffers from regular attacks that have absolutely nothing to do with Islam or ISIS or any ethnic minorities in the USA at all – they have come from WHITE AMERICANS. Yet it’s easy to sit and shake your fist across the Atlantic because any European attack must be from someone “different” – and the accusations are coming from closer to home too.
So instead of pointing the finger at particular nations or groups of people or whole religions, let’s take a step back and remember that anything can happen anywhere. Until the news unfolds and we know who is responsible, we cannot judge – and even then, we cannot tar everyone with the same brush, but of course so many will.
In the meantime, I am firmly keeping everyone affected in my thoughts, and praying for my room mate and everyone in the same situation. Please, do the same. It’s all we can do.
An Orcadian Abroad 