Islam in Europe Now a No-Go Subject
“No-go zones” have turned into a you don’t want to go their topic.
By Aaron Goldstein – 1.28.15
A few days after the terrorist attacks in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher grocery store, terrorism expert Steve Emerson appeared on the Fox News Channel’s Justice with Judge Jeanine hosted by Jeanine Pirro to discuss Islamic extremism in Europe. During his appearance, Emerson spoke about Muslim “no-go zones” throughout Europe where countries like France, Germany, Sweden, and Britain have ceded sovereignty and non-Muslims are not permitted to enter. Emerson also stated that Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, is “totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go.”
All hell would break loose and Emerson would issue an apology for his comments while FNC issued several apologies after repeating Emerson’s statements. Despite the apology, the mayor of Paris has declared she will sue Fox News. In a snarky piece written in the Atlantic by David A. Graham titled “Why the Muslim ‘No-Go-Zone’ Myth Won’t Die?” Graham writes:
Have you heard about the areas of Europe, or perhaps even of the United States, that are run by jihadists and which non-Muslims can’t even enter? Don’t get too worried if you haven’t: They don’t exist.
Needless to say the Left hasn’t been this happy since Barack Obama’s first election victory. Speaking of President Obama, his British BFF David Cameron referred to Emerson as “a complete idiot.” Cameron is one to talk. This is the same man who once characterized Israel’s blockade of Gaza as “a prison camp.” Never mind that Egypt was also participating in this blockade as well. Apparently, Cameron also thinks the Hamas-run government bears no responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in Gaza either.
Criticize Steve Emerson all you want. Emerson may have been wrong in this instance, but he did warn the world months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, “Al Qaeda is ... planning new attacks on the US.... [It has] learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings.” No, Steve Emerson is not a complete idiot. Far from it. In exposing threats from Islamic extremists, Emerson has subjected himself to numerous death threats by jihadists and, for the past two decades, has taken extraordinary protective measures in his day-to-day living. I can attest to the heavy security measures deployed when I went to see him speak at a Brookline synagogue more than a decade ago. Emerson’s bravery cannot be called into question, which is more than what I can say for David Cameron.
Besides, if David Cameron considers Steve Emerson to be a complete idiot for talking about the existence of Muslim no-go zones then why, as Robert Spencer has noted, have the New York Times, Newsweek, and New Republic also used the term “no-go zone”?
So something the New York Times noted in 2002 and Newsweek in 2005, and that the New Republic reported was still a problem in January 2015, is now something Fox News has to apologize for discussing?
Actually, the New York Times used the term “no go zone” as recently as September 2014 in an article discussing European anti-Semitism.
Yet FNC apologized and it wasn’t alone in issuing apologies. CNN’s Anderson Cooper also issued an apology for using the term “no-go zones” on the air as well. Will the New York Times, Newsweek, and New Republic be issuing apologies next? If so, will Cameron also call them complete idiots?
It may be wrong to say that large parts of Europe are under Muslim control where law enforcement and non-Muslims at large are forbidden from traversing. But only a complete idiot would deny there isn’t a desire among a critical mass of Muslims to impose Sharia law or, at the very minimum, behave in a violent manner towards non-Muslims.
In 2011, the group Islam4UK led by Ahmed Choudary began putting up posters around the UK bearing an ominous warning:
YOU ARE ENTERING A SHARIAH CONTROLLED ZONE
ISLAMIC RULES ENFORCED
The sign also indicated that in these zones alcohol, gambling, drugs, smoking, porn, prostitution, music and concerts were forbidden. At the time Choudary stated, “We want to run the area as a Sharia-controlled zone and really to put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term.”
If the name Ahmed Choudary sounds familiar, it should. Following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, Choudary penned an op-ed in USA Today praising the attacks:
Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, “Whoever insults a Prophet kill him.”
However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.
Choudary was interviewed last November on 60 Minutes Overtime as was his colleague Abu Ramaysah. Take a look what Ramaysah told correspondent Clarissa Ward:
Ultimately, I want to see every single woman in this country covered from head to toe. I want to the see the hand of the thief cut. I want to see adulterers stoned to death. I want to see Sharia law in Europe. And I want to see it in America as well. I believe our patrols are a means to an end.
In view of Choudary and Ramaysah’s aims and objectives in conjunction with Choudary’s praise of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he and those who wish to impose Sharia law in Britain and elsewhere in Europe must be taken every bit as seriously as the people who perpetrated the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
It is true that these posters Choudary disseminated were not legally sanctioned and Scotland Yard worked with local councils to take them down. Nevertheless, this hasn’t prevented self-appointed Muslim Patrols from trying to enforce Sharia law on the streets of London. Similar patrols have also surfaced in Germany.
In October 2013, an American student from Florida named Francesco Houyne was severely beaten and had a beer bottle smashed into his face by one of these London patrols for drinking alcohol. Two months later, a Muslim Patrol threatened a couple holding hands in public telling them, “Let go of each other’s hands. This is a Muslim area!” and then blocked their car when they tried to get away. On both occasions the people responsible for the incidents were arrested and charged.
It would be difficult for British authorities to overlook violent incidents which take place in public. However, when things take place behind closed doors in Muslim majority neighborhoods, the authorities have looked the other way. as was the case in the Rotherham child sex scandal in which 1,400 girls were sexually abused over a 16-year period by a group of predominantly Muslim men of Pakistani origin (or “Asian” origin, as the Brits like to say). Police and the local council were aware of the abuse, but did nothing out of fear of being called racist. Indeed, a researcher who alerted authorities to the abuse back in 2001 was sent on an “ethnicity and diversity” sensitivity course and admonished for making reference to their “Asian” heritage. As far as British police and public officials were concerned, the sexual abuse of girls by Muslim men was, well, a no-go zone.
This problem isn’t confined to Britain. Consider what Pakistani-born Canadian Muslim journalist Natasha Fatah wrote in December 2010 following a trip to Malmo, Sweden, with her husband:
Malmo was supposed to be a symbol of Sweden’s multiculturalism. But it is in danger of turning into an Islamist ghetto, with a hard core of those who favour an Islamic state.
Fatah went on to write that synagogues have been vandalized and Jews have been publicly accosted on the streets, but that local authorities have done little to stop the problem and as a result Jews are leaving Sweden. So here is a Muslim who recognizes the danger of turning Sweden into an Islamic state. Would David Cameron call her a complete idiot too?
So where does this leave the term “no-go zone”? The term was coined by Daniel Pipes back in 2006. But by 2013, following visits to Muslim neighborhoods throughout Europe, Pipes reassessed his view:
I found that those areas “are not full-fledged no-go zones” — meaning places where the government had lost control of territory. No warlords dominate; sharia is not the law of the land. I expressed regret back then for having used the term no-go zones.
So how does Pipes think these enclaves should now be described? He suggests “semi-autonomous sectors.” Honestly, it doesn’t matter what term Pipes uses to describe Muslims who seek to impose Sharia on the rest of the population. Islamists and their left-wing apologists in the media believe Islam is beyond criticism. They want Islam to be a no-go subject.
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