European no-go zones that non-Muslims may not enter have made headlines recently, despite the inconvenient fact that they don’t exist. Because of an overwhelming and unexpected reaction from France and England in particular, Fox News issued an apology for letting anchors and guests repeatedly discuss such zones. Yet there are those who refuse to back down. Case in point: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential Republican presidential candidate.

In an interview with CNN, he reiterated a point that others on the right have recently made (and that some on the left, such as Bill Maher, appear to agree with):

The huge issue with nonassimilation is the fact that people want to come to our country but not adopt our values — in some cases, not adopt our language, in some cases, want to set apart their own enclaves and continue to hold on to their own values. I think it is dangerous in America and it’s dangerous in Europe.

The comments came on the heels of a speech he gave in London in which he said that nonassimilationist Muslims “carry out as much of Sharia law as they can without regard for the laws of the democratic countries which provided them a new home.”

Such arguments are grossly misleading. Enclaves tend to form because immigrants of lower socioeconomic status don’t have the tools to adapt to a new culture and seek the comfort of the familiar, not because they want to consciously threaten mainstream culture. History shows that with time, enclaves often collapse. Just as important, religion-based nonassimilation has been allowed to flourish in pockets in the United States, sometimes buttressed by the First Amendment, which protects the free exercise of religion. So why the double standard?

After all, according to an article by Rachel Aviv in The New Yorker, Hasidic Jews in New York City have long been given much leeway. “In exchange for the community’s loyalty, politicians have given Brooklyn’s Hasidim wide latitude to police themselves,” she wrote. “They have their own emergency medical corps, a security patrol and a rabbinic court system, which often handles criminal allegations.”

A New York Times article published in November noted the extent to which Hasidic children’s learning deviated from what is taught in public schools: “Boys in elementary and middle school study religious subjects from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. followed by approximately 90 minutes of English and math. At 13, when boys formally enter yeshiva, most stop receiving any English instruction.”

The subject of the article, Naftuli Moster, an activist trying to bring systemic change to education in Hasidic communities, said that in his yeshiva, English, math and science were considered profane. It is not surprising that many come out of school with a limited grasp of English.

New York state law requires that all schools have curriculums that are equivalent to public schools’, yet schools in the Hasidic community are allowed to get away with completely divergent teaching.