Jindal doubles down on Muslim 'no-go zones' in Europe

Paul Singer | USA TODAY

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, will give a speech Monday in London and reiterate the disputed claim that Muslim immigrants have created "no-go zones" in Europe where non-Muslims are not welcome.

An advance text of Jindal's speech, circulated by his office, warns that Islamic radicals are fomenting anti-Western sentiment in "no-go zones" where they rule themselves by Islamic religious law, not the laws of their host nations.

"In the West, non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and 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," Jindal's text reads. "It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called 'no-go zone.' The idea that a free country would allow for specific areas of its country to operate in an autonomous way that is not free and is in direct opposition to its laws is hard to fathom."

The "no-go zones" theory became a bit of an international incident over the weekend when Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism said on FoxNews that in parts of France, Britain, Sweden and Germany, Muslim immigrants have set up enclaves where the host nations "don't exercise any sovereignty." He added that in the United Kingdom there are even entire cities — specifically the city of Birmingham — "where non-Muslims simply don't go in."

British Prime Minister David Cameron responded: "When I heard this frankly, I choked on my porridge and I thought it must be April Fools Day. This guy is clearly a complete idiot."

Emerson posted an apology to Birmingham on his organization's website: "I have clearly made a terrible error for which I am deeply sorry. My comments about Birmingham were totally in error." But he did not retract the other portions of his FoxNews interview.

"I stand on what I said," Emerson told USA TODAY Thursday. "I should have pointed out at the outset that no-go zones are not static. But yes, there are areas in other parts of Europe — 'amorphous' as I specifically pointed — such as in France, Sweden, and Germany in which there are no-go zones where governments do not exercise sovereignty. Officially, national governments do not acknowledge the formal existence of such no-go zones. But they definitely exist, as attested to by statements of and first hand observations and experiences of local government officials — from mayors to police chiefs and rulings of local courts."

Jindal's speech notes also the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and again ties it back to the alleged Muslim enclaves.

"How does such evil rise again in democratic countries? I believe it is because radical Islamists have been given too wide a berth to establish their own nation within a nation," Jindal's text reads. "In America we are quite happy to welcome freedom-loving people, regardless of religion, who want to abide by our laws allowing for freedom of expression and a host of other democratic freedoms. But we will never allow for any sect of people to set up their own areas where they establish their own set of laws."

Jindal's larger point is that Western nations can embrace immigrants who are arriving with the goal of assimilating "coming to join your culture, your mores, your laws, and become a part of your history." But nations must ask, he says, "are they coming to be set apart, are they unwilling to assimilate, do they have their own laws they want to establish, do they fundamentally disagree with your political culture? Therein lies the difference between immigration and invasion."

Jindal warns, "What some immigrants of late desire to do is to colonize Western countries because setting up your own enclave and demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S.-based Muslim civil rights group, said "This whole bogus notion of no-go zones in Europe has been floating around in right wing anti-Muslim circles for years ... but they can't provide evidence for any of the them."

"You would think that someone who aspires to higher office would not indulge in this type of hate-mongering," Hooper added.

Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, who is credited with originating the idea of "no-go zones in 2006, has since recanted his claims. "These are not full-fledged no-go zones but, as the French nomenclature accurately indicates, 'sensitive urban zones,'" Pipes wrote in 2013. "In normal times, they are nonthreatening, routine places. But they do unpredictably erupt, with car burnings, attacks on representatives of the state (including police), and riots. Having this first-hand experience, I regret having called these areas no-go zones."

Pipes updated his original post again on Wednesday, saying "the term no-go zone does not accurately reflect the situation" of areas that may seem "dangerous" from "an American point of view."

As evidence of the existence of "no-go zones," Jindal's office cited blog posts from the Gatestone Foundation, which is chaired by former State Department official John Bolton.

Bolton's group argues that "the "no-go" areas are the by-product of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged Muslim immigrants to create parallel societies and remain segregated rather than become integrated into their European host nations." Jindal reiterates that argument in his speech, saying that liberals in the United States have adopted a mistaken philosophy that "it is wrong to expect that people who chose to immigrate to your country should be expected to endorse and abide by your laws."