The Walls That Divide Europe

The Walls That Divide Europe
by Herbert London
09/04/2011

Walls can be used to keep people in and keep people out, as was true of he Berlin Wall erected in 1961 and today of the walls being erected throughout Europe.

These contemporary walls operate under the name of "no go" zones, areas that are off limits to non-Muslims. These zones function as micro-states governed by Sharia Law. In many locations from Malmo to Hamburg, and from Liverpool to Rotterdam, host country authorities have lost effective control over these zones, and often are unable to provide even basic public aid -- such as police and fire assistance and ambulance services -- without permission from the local imam.

Here, in unvarnished terms, are the influences of multicultural policies that encouraged Muslim immigrants to live in parallel societies "walled in" through both a desire for separation and the host's desire to avoid integration.

In Britain, for example, a Muslim group called Muslims Against The Crusades, has launched a campaign to convert twelve British cities – including London – into independent Islamic states. In the "Tower Hamlets" area of East London, extremist Muslim preachers routinely issue death threats to women who refuse to wear Islamic veils. Neighborhood streets are plastered with posters that declare: "You are entering a Sharia controlled zone; Islamic rules enforced." The Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen heckled the former Home Secretary John Reid by saying, "How dare you come to a Muslim area!"

At last count, the French police maintain there are 751 "no go" zones (Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS) listed on the French government website. And mosques in Paris have been broadcasting sermons and chants of "Allahu Akbar" on loudspeakers into the streets. By any stretch, this represents an occupation force in France.

In a widely publicized event, fire fighters trying to extinguish a fire in the town's main mosque in Malmo, Sweden, were attacked by Muslim stone throwers. The argument for the disruption was that the fire fighting team did not obtain permission from the imams to enter "their" community. According to Malmo-based Imam Adly Abu Hajar: "Sweden is the best Islamic state."

These walls that divide are having a crippling influence on European societies. Muslim extremists employ the separation as a tactic to proselytize, and Europeans often describe these zones as evidence that Muslims cannot be integrated. The governments in question, eager to maintain stability, acquiesce in favor of the multicultural position. However, the acquiescence does not yield an expected result. The "no-go" zones breed hostility; these areas are time-bombs waiting to be set off by even relatively benign circumstances.

For decades the Berlin Wall was a symbol separating two worlds: freedom and dictatorship. It is instructive that the new walls separate liberal values from notions of religious extremism in a manner not that dissimilar from the past. Although guns, tanks and barbed wire do not separate "no go" zones from host societies, the separation is no less real and no less dangerous.