Franklin Graham: Allowing Muslim Refugees Would Risk Christians' Security in US
Evangelist Franklin Graham said allowing tens of thousands of Muslim refugees into the United States, as President Barack Obama wants, could mean attacks on Christians in the country just as they are being targeted elsewhere, pointing to the killing of a Christian priest in Normandy, France, last week.
"President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and some other politicians want to allow tens of thousands of Muslim refugees into this country. A few days ago two Muslim men went into a Catholic Church in France in the name of ISIS and brutally slit the throat of an 85-year-old priest," Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, wrote in a Facebook post.
"The self-proclaimed ISIS soldiers shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as they ran from the church," Graham pointed out, adding, "Unless something is done, it's just a matter of time before we see this happen here in the United States."
Hamel's parish, the Church of the Gambetta in the French town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, had donated land to Muslims to build a mosque, a senior Catholic cleric said last week, days after the priest was killed July 26 by supporters of the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh and which operates from Iraq and Syria.
In his Facebook post, Graham included a link to an article published in New York Post, titled "We have failed to protect Christians from Islamic terror."
"Our tolerance for Islam's intolerance is the greatest weapon these blood-cult terrorists have," the article states.
Despite severe attacks in Syria, the author writes, "President Obama refused to acknowledge the torture, rape, kidnapping, enslavement and mass murder of Christians at the hands of Islamist fanatics (and not just ISIS)," and adds, "When alarmed voices raised the prospect of giving priority to Christian refugees, the administration cried, 'Bigotry!' — and gave priority to Muslim migrants."
The author adds: "In the name of tolerance, we've allowed foreign-funded hate mosques to tyrannize our Muslim fellow citizens. Citing religious freedom, we won't even eavesdrop on incitements to murder or prevent rabid foreign institutions from sending militant mullahs to bully Muslim communities in the West."
The French priest's killers were identified as 19-year-old Adel Kermiche from Northern France and Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean, also 19, from Eastern France. They were shot and killed by authorities as they exited the church after murdering the priest.
The Christian Post earlier reported that the Church of the Gambetta was found on an ISIS hit list from 2015. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack by releasing a video purporting to show the two teenagers pledging their allegiance to the jihadists.
The Sunni terror group has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria, and some have posed that to be a reason behind increased attacks in other parts of the world. Such attacks, they claim, help ISIS to falsely portray its strength and the spread of its ideology as well as create divisions and thereby gain more recruits.