Speaking at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Manila, President Obama said of the bipartisan House bill calling for a pause in the admission of Syrian refugees until they can be properly vetted, said he could not think of a more "potent recruitment tool" for the Islamic State than GOP rhetoric suggesting a religious test.  Obama claimed that Republicans are afraid of widows and orphans.  He has also accused Republicans of seeking to oppose a religious test, one preferring Christians over Muslims.

First of all, Mr. President, religious persecution is listed on the refugee request form as one of the reasons for requesting such status.  And the fact is that from the Yazidi Christians of Iraq to the Coptic Christians of Egypt, where religious persecution exists, it is more likely to be Muslims persecuting Christians than the other way around.  Your appeasement of and refusal even to mention radical Islamic terrorism, Mr. President, is the only recruitment tool what you called the "JV team" needs to gather new jihadis.  The GOP is not afraid of widows and orphans, but it is afraid of the Islamic State creating more widows and orphans in Europe and in the United States.

As for ignoring the plight of Syrian refugees, it is President Obama who created the refugee crisis.  While his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was calling Bashar Assad a "reformer," he was ignoring the widows and orphans of Syria, letting Assad bomb and gas them while he drew imaginary "red lines" in the sand.  For five years he did nothing as 300,000 Syrians were murdered by their government.

Both President Obama, who still thinks Ft. Hood was a case of "workplace violence," and Hillary Clinton are, of course, experts on what makes radical Islamic terrorists mad.  It was they who pushed the lie that the Benghazi attack by radical Islamic terrorists was based on an inflammatory video.  They even told that lie to the parents of the Benghazi victims' families in front of the caskets.  President Obama repeated it six times before the United Nations, saying the future did not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam – as John Kerry might point out, like the editors of Charlie Hebdo.

As for religious tests, one is imposed by radical Islamic terrorists constantly, such as the one imposed on the residents of a luxury hotel in Mali.  As BizPac Review reported:

Islamic terrorists shouting 'Allahu Akbar' have stormed a hotel in Mali, Africa, freeing only those who can recite the Quran.

There's a religious test for you, Mr. President, one you don't care to point out or condemn.  Some 30 people failed the religious test imposed by radical Islamic terrorists.  You tell us such attacks have nothing to do with Islam, yet the radical Islamic terrorists always shout "Allahu akhbar" before they kill those determined to be Christian.

Administration indifference to the war on non-Muslims by radical Islamic terrorists, who just might want to slip into the U.S. amidst a flood of refugees as they have already in Europe, has been well documented.  As Investor's Business Daily has pointed out:

Yet, we could find no such sentiment or statement by Obama condemning as a religiously motivated hate crime in the September 2014 beheading of an Oklahoma Christian woman by a former co-worker for not heeding his demand to convert to Islam or die.

Dare we say it depends on whose ox is being gored? Obama — who apologized to the United Nations after the Benghazi terrorist attack, saying a video offensive to Muslims prompted it — also said, 'The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.'

That declaration would seem to include the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, who were accused of doing just that before a terrorist attack killed eight journalists. The massacre at Fort Hood was 'workplace violence, 'not a jihad terrorist attack by Maj. Nidal Hasan against Western 'crusaders.'

The lives of the four Jews killed in a kosher market in Paris were dismissed by Obama as 'a bunch of folks in a deli' shot 'randomly' as they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Detect a pattern here?....

Nor was the mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by Islamic State terrorists in Libya, a failed state brought about by administration bungling and failure to acknowledge who our enemies are and why they're trying to kill us.

Sorry, Mr. President, but House Republicans led by Paul Ryan, and the 47 Democrats who voted with him, are right to be prudent to be wary of refugees from Syria or any state sponsor of terror who might want to kill us, or might become radicalized to do so later.  It is radical Islamic terrorists who create widows and orphans.  It is they who are imposing a deadly religious test, which, in your infinite cluelessness, you choose to ignore.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.