Although estimates can vary considerably, throughout Europe, there are as many as 56 million Muslims living there. Russia accounts for nearly half with over 27 million. Excluding Russia, over half of the remainder can be found in just five countries:
The remainder of Europe's Muslim population is scattered all over eastern and western Europe. There are just three countries in Europe with majority Muslim populations: Albania, Kosovo and Herzegovina. Elsewhere in Europe, Muslims are only a tiny fraction of the population, but are growing rapidly.
How and why did the major powers of western Europe end up with so many Muslims? And what are we to make of these 'no go' areas where it is claimed local police are forbidden to go and where Sharia law and courts reign? How did this happen? Is it true or just a sensationalized news report?
Islam is not native to Western Europe. Insofar as Eastern Europe is concerned, particularly the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia, the Muslim presence is a vestige of Islamic invasions conducted many centuries ago.
Muslims in France
After the end of the second World War, France declared itself an "immigrant country." In 1961, the French colony of Algeria waged a war for independence from France. Algerian immigration to French cities spiked during that time as Algerians sought to escape the war.
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, the president of the Middle East Forum, and publisher of its Middle East Quarterly journal. In an article written by Mr. Pipes in 2006, he labeled 751 areas in France as "no-go zones." The 2006 article has been the source of much confusion lately in 2014 and 2015.
Daniel Pipes wrote his original article in 2006, as mentioned, but in 2013, he admitted his article contained errors, which he sought to correct in good faith. In January 2013, Pipes wrote,
I had an opportunity today to travel at length to several banlieues (suburbs) around Paris, including Sarcelles, Val d'Oise, and Seine Saint Denis. This comes on the heels of having visited over the years the predominantly immigrant (and Muslim) areas of Brussels, Copenhagen, Malmö, Berlin, and Athens.
A couple of observations:
Having this first-hand experience, I regret having called these areas no-go zones.
Although it has been established that these zones are not wholly autonomous, the fact remains their presence has hindered assimilation of Muslims into French society. Instead, the strictest religious elements within these areas appear desirous of bending French society and cultural norms to its own set of cultural preferences.
The French have taken action to resist these efforts. In 2004, France banned headscarves from state run primary and secondary education because it was a "conspicuous religious symbol", similar to a yarmulke or a Christian cross. In 2011, France became the first nation in Europe to officially ban the burqa.
Recently, several commentators and Fox News needed to issue retractions and apologies for making inaccurate statements about the so called "no go" zones. Still, while the retractions and apologies for those specific statements were completely warranted, it has been reported for years that Muslims in many of these zones are hostile and even violent to the native population, especially Jews.
In 2002, while writing for the New York Times, David Ignatius said, "Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders.”
The political left in America and elsewhere is desperate to run down critics of Islam or Fox News. Controversializing news outlets and well respected critics who have admitted to and apologized for errors made, smacks of an agenda unrelated to this issue.
The bottom line: At least according to one Middle Eastern expert respected in Conservative American circles, the claim of no go zones in France is somewhat exaggerated. Nevertheless, multiculturalism is failing in France. A society cannot be multicultural when norms within different cultures conflict or are intolerant of harmonious co-existence.
With Muslim birth rates and immigration rates far outpacing the native population growth, which is actually shrinking, the Muslim immigration and resistance to assimilate represents a form of colonization of France. It strains credulity to expect the French to accept this without any nationalistic reaction. When it comes, that reaction will create a great deal of unrest in France and evidence has indicated it already has.
Canadian television reported this attack by Muslim teens on people leaving a Catholic Church mass.
[youtube:"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jg8EeL7zD8"]
Muslims in Germany
At the same time France was experiencing surging Muslim immigration from Algeria and elsewhere, West Germany created a guest worker program. The number of Muslims in Germany is hard to measure because it is German law to maintain the privacy of one's religious affiliation. It is believed that most of the Muslim immigrants are from Turkey. The presence of radical Islamists in Germany has been well documented. The 9/11 plot was hatched in a terrorist cell in Hamburg.
A 2013 article in a German newspaper reported that 90% of the criminal behavior committed by youths in Germany, are committed by those "with an immigrant background." Much of the problem Germany has with Muslim immigrants seems to revolve around youth street gangs.
As with France, the local elected leadership is loathe to admit to a problem. The primary concern of local officials seems to be the anticipated loss of tourism that could result from bad publicity out of fear of radical muslim violence.
Germans seem to have left the problem to localities. By 2012, about one-half of all German states instituted bans on public sector workers wearing veils and head scarves. Still, over 60% of Germans favor an overall ban, recognizing there is a problem.
As with France, the lack of assimilation by young muslims into German society is creating a societal problem, resulting in the same kind of nationalistic backlash. And nobody needs to be reminded of the historical consequences resulting from the backlash of German nationalistic fervor.
Muslims in the UK
In 2008, the Church of England's only Asian bishop, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester said that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.
Writing in The Sunday UK Telegraph, he compared the threat to the use of intimidation by the far-Right, and said that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christianity to be the nation’s public religion in a multifaith, multicultural society.
His comments came at a time when a poll of the General Synod – the Church’s parliament – shows that its senior leaders, including bishops, also believe that Britain is being damaged by large-scale immigration.
The remarks by Nazir-Ali were strongly criticized by Muslim groups and Tories in England, but Conservatives largely supported the comments and asked only for milder language.
[youtube="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSjiaRzHqdU"]
CNN reported in 2013, of vigilante groups of Muslim men patroling Muslim areas and enforcing Sharia law.
[youtube="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcsG-u2GtZE"]
Another CNN report on the kind of Islamic radicalism present in Great Britain:
[youtube:"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRFgcBbqs60&feature=youtu.be"]
Conclusion
It isn't important whether there are official no go zones in European countries or not. The fact is, the multiculturalist social experiment has hit a brick wall with Islam. A very sizable and dangerous contingent within the Islamic community has no desire or intention of blending into the nations in which they now live. This contingent seeks to alienate itself from the dominant society, behave in a belligerent fashion and bend it to its own will. They refuse to coexist peacefully unless the dominant culture capitulates to its demands. It is irrelevant that a majority of Muslims do not agree with the approach of this radicalized contingent. That is a "nice to know" fact. But just as most Germans were not Nazi murderers, this fact too became wholly irrelevant when the Nazis took the reins of leadership in Germany. It is no different with the Islamist radicals in Europe and the rest of the Muslim population not aligned with them. Without their proactive, animated and effective denunciation and marginalization of the extremists, they will become swept up into their movement as surely as the main body of the German people did in the 1930s and 1940s.
Religious populations.com
751 No go zones in France reported 9 years ago
