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“When the government puts an emphasis on one group over another, you have to ask if this is an equitable process,” said Ottawa Centre NDP candidate Paul Dewar, his party’s foreign affairs critic. “What is the government’s filter on this?”

But there is also the question of why Muslim groups aren’t mobilizing in the same way as Hay Doun. Syrian Canadian Council spokesman Faisal Alazem acknowledged it’s a challenge, but says a number of factors are at play.

For example, he said communities and churches like the Armenian Christians have been around for decades, if not centuries. They have millions of dollars in assets, a tradition of refugee resettlement and experience navigating the system.

In contrast, many Muslim communities are very young and either renting mosques or still paying them off, he said. They also have little experience or knowledge of the refugee system, and many are struggling to send money to family abroad. And the community is subdivided along national, ethnic and political lines.

Mohamad Jebara, chief imam and resident scholar at the Cordova Spiritual Education Centre in Ottawa, is one of a growing number of Muslims working with Christian churches to sponsor Syrian refugees to come to Canada. In this case, he and his partners are trying to privately sponsor two families.

Jebara echoed Alazem’s assessment of the challenges facing the Muslim community. At the same time, while the actual application process doesn’t include any reference to religion, he said other factors such as education and family size favour certain types of refugees over others. That is how he and his partners settled upon two Christian families.

“Indirectly, if you analyze the criteria, there’s a direction it leads you towards,” he said. “When the call for humanitarian aid is raised, a refugee’s education, culture or religion should not be at the forefront of the consideration, rather than our shared humanity.”

lberthiaume@ottawacitizen.com

Twitter.com/leeberthiaume