This tweet perfectly captures why it’s appalling to blame refugees for the Paris attacks

We still don’t know who’s behind the gruesome Paris attacks on Friday night. But that hasn’t stopped people from speculating — and some have even blamed the attacks on refugees coming from Syria, who have increasingly come to Europe as the country’s civil war continues.

This tweet, from Dan Holloway, explains why that’s nonsense:

Again, we still don’t know who’s to blame for the Paris attacks, whether a jihadist group was involved, or the motives involved. But if a jihadist group is the culprit, these kinds of terrorist organizations are exactly the kind of danger that many Syrian refugees are fleeing from. It is ISIS, after all, that has terrorized so much of Syria — and forced people to flee their homes to avoid violence.

Furthermore, jihadist groups have been recruiting a number of European citizens — such as ISIS’s infamous Jihadi John, a British citizen. So the assumption that only foreigners would be to blame for a terrorist attack in France is not sound.