In a situation as chaotic as Turkish camps sheltering refugees from the Syrian war, it is difficult to gauge levels of ISIS support with accuracy. So many groups have vested interests in analysing surveys that the results are often manipulated. For instance, a poll of ISIS sympathies among refugees conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, based in Qatar, discovered 4% of respondents held a positive view of the extremist group, 9% were 'positive to some extent' while 10% said they were 'negative to some extent.' Four percent 'didn't know.' Conservative analysts merely seized on the fact that 27% of the refugees hadn't stated they were completely opposed to ISIS, conflating this statistic with the erroneous statement that 'one in three refugees are therefore sympathetic.' This is where the truth gets distorted - and spun into the agendas of far-right commentators in Europe.

The truth is the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees in Turkish camps are bitterly opposed to ISIS. Over the past six years, warfare, ethnic cleansing and sexual violence has uprooted millions of civilians, with those living in territory under ISIS control having been particularly vulnerable. The only reason there haven't been more refugees fleeing ISIS is that their snipers threaten those attempting to escape. Most Syrians - Sunni or Shia, Druze or Kurd - despair at the way ISIS are attempting to erdicate centuries of Syrian civilization with their destruction of historical sites and ancient shrines.

Unfortunately, the root cause of the Syrian conflict concerns loyalty to or hatred of the Assad regime, and that is the lens through which some refugees may be viewing ISIS. This hardly equates to sympathising with the terrorist group's countless atrocities. But it does explain why a small number of refugees, especially if they have been driven from their homes by pro-regime militia, may regard ISIS as an opposition group first, and terrorists second.

It’s very likely that among the low percentage of Syrian refugees who have even a somewhat positive opinion of the Islamic State, most of them do not share its hateful ideology. It’s more likely that they view the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad as their main enemy, and support any groups fighting him. They may also be especially suspicious of the United States’ efforts to combat the group, because they see the U.S. as having done little to alleviate their suffering under Assad.

And actually as I was reading that The Gateway Pundit assumes that the 13 percent of Syrian refugees with positive views of the Islamic State group would be represented proportionally among the 10,000 Syrian refugees the Obama administration has pledged to admit this fiscal year. According to this math, that means that the U.S. would admit 1,300 “ISIS supporters,” the conservative site declares.

This is just not true. Even if some of the refugees with a “positive” opinion of the Islamic State share the group’s determination to attack the West, it’s extremely unlikely that those people would make it through the United States’ refugee admission system.