They’ve gone dark: Afghans who helped the U.S. military, trained as American-style journalists and rode the wave of women heading to higher education are destroying the diplomas, transcripts and résumés that prove how they built civil society in the country that the U.S. has left behind.
Tracing the difference between Islam and ISIS on Twitter
STOCKTON, California — President Obama, GOP presidential candidates, and U.S. governors spoke out today on the subject of Islam and Muslim migrants today amid growing calls for restrictions on refugee flows.
In a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, where he attended a meeting of Group of 20 summit meeting, President Obama defended the right of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries to seek better lives in Europe and the United States.
“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism; they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”
But GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign took to Twitter, tweeting a clip of an Oct. 3 interview with Fox News in which Trump predicted that if Syrian refugees are allowed into the United States, “some of them definitely will be ISIS.”
Discussing #SyrianRefugees with @EricBolling on @FoxNews back on 10/3/2015. #ISIS pic.twitter.com/rUX57o2BzM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2015
Also today, governors of several U.S. states — from Alabama to Florida and California — announced they would seek to block refugees from entering their states, especially if they are from Syria.
French prosecutors have identified one of the Paris attackers as Ahmad Almohammad, a Syrian passport holder who reportedly entered the European Union via Greece along with refugees. According to the BBC, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said terror attacks in Paris last Friday that killed an estimated 129 people and injured 352 had been organized in Syria.
This Storify by student Celine Lopez at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Stockton, California, traces how Twitter users used social media last Friday during the Paris terror attacks in order to explain the differences between religious belief and violence, terrorists and refugees, and Islam and ISIS.
After the Paris attacks, many said “that all Muslim people are the root of terrorism,” Lopez wrote, “but others on social media want to make it clear that Islam is not affiliated with terrorism.”
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