French/European No-Go Zones?

[Commodore]

Okay ever since the terror attacks in Paris I have been hearing about these "no-go zones" in France and other European nations. The claim is that these are Muslim dominated neighborhoods in which the French government has absolutely no authority and non-Muslims are encouraged to stay out of those neighborhoods.

I have tried doing some research on this matter for myself because, quite frankly, the claims sound almost too outrageous to be true. However, the only sources I can seem to find about them are from some not-so-reputable sources or sources that have a clear anti-Islam slant. So I am asking any European or, more specifically, French posters here to shed some light on the situation for me. Do these "no-go zones" really exist? If so, is it really as bad as some in the media are making it out to be in the sense that authorities have absolutely no control over these zones?

Also, as a broader topic of this thread, what do you think of a nation expecting immigrants to assimilate into the local culture? Should they be expected to 100% assimilate? Should they be allowed to, or even encouraged, to retain their mother culture? If the latter, how much of their mother culture should they retain? How much should an immigrant be reasonably expected to assimilate into the local culture?

 

[wolfigor]

Yes and no.
There is a lot of exaggeration in the media about "no go zones".
There are some neighbourhoods where criminality is very strong and police is ineffective at doing any order there.
For people it's advisable to stay away from those areas, which exist in every large town in the world.

Some of those neighbourhoods are dominated by specific ethnic groups.
The main problem is low income and criminality and not really the ethnic makeup.

for example:
http://swedenreport.org/2014/10/29/swedish-police-55-official-no-go-zones/

This is an example of a country which has some ghettos where criminality dominates and those ghettos have a very specific ethnic makeup.
However in other countries you have similar situations in areas which are not related to immigrants.
I don't have a link in English, however the example comes from my native country Italy.
Probably you heard about Mafia, so you wouldn't be surprise to know that there are some neighbourhoods in which Mafia dominates and they are de-facto no-go zones: these have nothing to do witth Muslim or immigration, just with criminality.

I am sure that we can find similar examples a bot everywhere

 

[Kyriakos]

Ghettos always are to be avoided, and indeed those tend to form mostly in huge cities (eg London or Paris) and where there are very large numbers of minorities which for one reason or other (varying from fear of losing their culture or what they view as that, to hostility between ethnic groups on historic/media-driven ground) never quite function as a full part of the local society.
It is even happening (afaik) in that monstrous hellhole that Athens by now is.

Here afaik it is not an issue apart from some distant periphery of the city, where there is a reservation of roma/othername people. They too have serious difficulty to integrate, which is creating hell for them in the first place.

PS: I once went south of the Elephant and Castle (and Waterloo station), ie south of the Thames, in search for a cheaper apartment.
I never went south of the Thames further than Waterloo station again...

 

[Mise]

Link to video.

"There are cities like Birmingham, which are totally muslim, where non-Muslims simply don't go in!"

"In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police, that actually beat, and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to Muslim-- religious Muslim attire!"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30773297

 

[Mise]

PS: I once went south of the Elephant and Castle (and Waterloo station), ie south of the Thames, in search for a cheaper apartment.
I never went south of the Thames further than Waterloo station again...

What? That's ridiculous... Elephant and Castle isn't the nicest part of London by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't imagine who or what you could have seen that would make you write off half the city...

 

[Tahuti]

Well I am from Europe (more specifically, the Netherlands) and I used to think the idea of no-go zones was pure fearmongering, until I moved away from Friesland (which is ethnically fairly homogenious) to Amsterdam in 2012. As a result of what I saw down there, I began to think the concept wasn't as far-fetched at all. Now, it's not that the local government has no grip on it at all, but the government and mainstream civil society tends to be significantly less respected in those neighbourhoods.

And the problem isn't just poverty. Ethnically Dutch neighbourhoods (such as Amsterdam North) with the same poverty levels may have comparable crime rates to predominantly Arab/Turkish neighbourhoods (such as Bos & Lommer), but you rarely see large degrees of say Neo-Nazis coming from poor ethnically Dutch neighbourhoods. Thus, political extremism is a bigger problem in Moroccan and Turkish neighbourhoods. And there is a social tension between Muslims and Non-Muslims, with Orthodox Jews and Surinamese Hindus being particularly victimised by Muslim extremists in the Netherlands. In part this is due to the attitudes of their communal leaders: Imams are rarely trained in the Netherlands, and are instead imported from Muslim majority countries where extremism is more tolerated. And, since such communities only started to become a thing in the 1970s, our government is fairly inexperienced with dealing with them as well, compared to say the USA.

They can keep their identity, but only insofar this does not cause any friction with other communities. Right now, it definitely does. They seem to have become culturally distinct from their ancestral countries as well, somewhat, though at the same time, they have not yet been influenced enough by the customs of the country they live in. That is essentially what needs to happen.

 

[Kyriakos]

What? That's ridiculous... Elephant and Castle isn't the nicest part of London by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't imagine who or what you could have seen that would make you write off half the city...

Well, maybe it was just south of Elephant and Castle, but not that far away.
As to what i saw? Well, endless land of very lowrise concrete buildings, demolition crews, a very nice-looking girl, and random groups of people who looked quite agitated. I am sure my own projections going on increased the sense that the place was not good, but up to that point i was confined to the Bayswater-Paddington-Holland Park area (and was 18), so it was a cultural shock

 

[HannibalBarka]

It reminds me about when I moved to NYC about 15 years ago. When I told that my colleagues that I rented an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, every one was like "Are you mad??? it's full of drug dealers and prostitutes, no "normal" person go there". Fact was it was a very nice neighbourhood, with barely any drug dealers or prostitutes. Now that being said, many told many to never go wandering in Harlem, or worse Spanish Harlem. I went there and came back alive. People than told me not to go to the Bronx, else I'll be killed. I went there with my blond headed better half, and guess what? we're still alive. In France it's the same thing, those "warnings" are very often exaggerated and inflated by the media and the common people. Sure, wandering in drug dealers controlled places, starting to ask questions isn't the best thing someone should do, but that is not related to Islamism but to the fact that criminals do not want people investigating their business.

 

[Mise]

Well, maybe it was just south of Elephant and Castle, but not that far away.
As to what i saw? Well, endless land of very lowrise concrete buildings, demolition crews, a very nice-looking girl, and random groups of people who looked quite agitated. I am sure my own projections going on increased the sense that the place was not good, but up to that point i was confined to the Bayswater-Paddington-Holland Park area (and was 18), so it was a cultural shock

Yeah, not everyone can live in freaking Bayswater I'm just imagining you dropping your monocle into your champagne glass now

In all seriousness, if you lived only in that area up to that point then Elephant and Castle will be a shock... it's run down and rather "1960s concrete jungle". But it's not the worst place in London either. There are far more depressing places.

 

[Kyriakos]

^ +1

Quite so.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Don't visit Tottenham, there's Bulgarians there.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Link to video.

Fox News never ceases to amaze me.

 

[luiz]

It reminds me about when I moved to NYC about 15 years ago. When I told that my colleagues that I rented an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, every one was like "Are you mad??? it's full of drug dealers and prostitutes, no "normal" person go there". Fact was it was a very nice neighbourhood, with barely any drug dealers or prostitutes. Now that being said, many told many to never go wandering in Harlem, or worse Spanish Harlem. I went there and came back alive. People than told me not to go to the Bronx, else I'll be killed. I went there with my blond headed better half, and guess what? we're still alive. In France it's the same thing, those "warnings" are very often exaggerated and inflated by the media and the common people. Sure, wandering in drug dealers controlled places, starting to ask questions isn't the best thing someone should do, but that is not related to Islamism but to the fact that criminals do not want people investigating their business.

Yeah I've had the same experience. People tend to freak out about the "bad" neighborhoods of metropolises like Paris or NYC, but in reality for the most part they're just poor, not deadly.

I've been to some pretty crappy neighborhoods in Paris (for instance to visit the Basilica of St. Denis, in St. Denis), and didn't feel threatened in anyway. Those neighborhoods tend to have lots of immigrants, and they're not a place where I would want to live, but to call them "no-go" is ridiculous.

So this whole talk of "no-go" zones in Europe is laughable. That said, when someone tells you not to visit a certain neighborhood in Rio or Mexico City, don't visit it. Don't be dumb.

 

[luiz]

Link to video.

"There are cities like Birmingham, which are totally muslim, where non-Muslims simply don't go in!"

"In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police, that actually beat, and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to Muslim-- religious Muslim attire!"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30773297

That's just... wow. Just wow.

 

[Commodore]

Link to video.

"There are cities like Birmingham, which are totally muslim, where non-Muslims simply don't go in!"

"In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police, that actually beat, and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn't dress according to Muslim-- religious Muslim attire!"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30773297

And that's the kind of "information" I have been finding on this issue all over the place, which is why I felt the need to ask the question here. It seems the media isn't very interested in portraying the situation with any degree of accuracy.

 

[Kyriakos]

Iirc Birmingham has the largest muslim community in Britain, but it still is a minority overall in that city as well.

Anyway, wiki gives these stats, i suppose the polls use 'ethnicity' in a particular way too:

Ethnicity
(2011 Census) [2] 57.9% White (53.1% White British)
26.6% Asian
8.9% Black
4.4% Mixed Race
2.0% Other

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham

Not sure how many Hindu asians are in that city, but i suspect that not all 26+ % are Muslim. Although some areas likely have fully or very dominated muslim pupil classes and maybe even schools.

 

[warpus]

For people it's advisable to stay away from those areas, which exist in every large town in the world.

That's not really true. There isn't a "no go" part of Toronto, as far as I know. The closest you'd get is the Jane/Finch intersection and area, but that's more of a "be careful" and not a "don't go there" part of town. Granted, things could have changed, but I don't know if other large Canadian cities have such parts of town. Vancouver maybe, with all the drug parts of town?

It blows my mind that soome Scandinavian cities have such parts, where the criminal element has taken over and the criminals rule the area.. At least if that link I read is to be believed. If this happened where I live, I would see it as unacceptable - unless I was living somewhere outside of what we consider to be "the west" or let's say parts of L.A. - known for gang activity.

 

[BirraImperial]

I've been to some Turkish neighborhoods in Berlin and I never felt threatened. I think like others pointed out, it's more of a poverty / criminal issue and not a cultural or ethnical thing. The claims of Muslim no-go zones and Sharia law being imposed on those areas is just ridiculous and absolutely wrong...

Unbelievable how that crap aired on Fox News passes for journalism this days...

 

[warpus]

Unbelievable how that crap aired on Fox News passes for journalism this days...

It isn't journalism, but people think it is. It's Journalism Entertainment - as close to journalism as the WWE is to real wrastling.

 

[Kaitzilla]

And the problem isn't just poverty. Ethnically Dutch neighbourhoods (such as Amsterdam North) with the same poverty levels may have comparable crime rates to predominantly Arab/Turkish neighbourhoods (such as Bos & Lommer), but you rarely see large degrees of say Neo-Nazis coming from poor ethnically Dutch neighbourhoods.

Fear the Dutch!

And, since such communities only started to become a thing in the 1970s, our government is fairly inexperienced with dealing with them as well, compared to say the USA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/u...ibe-size-of-terror-lists-kept-by-us.html?_r=0

A map associated with the files ranked the top five cities where Americans who have been deemed “known or suspected terrorists” are concentrated. Four are large cities: New York, Houston, San Diego and Chicago. But the second-highest was Dearborn, Mich., a city of fewer than 100,000 people that has a large Arab and Muslim population.

In before Dearborn, Michigan is declared a No Go Zone.