An investigation has uncovered no fewer than 1,000 no-go zones spanning seven European countries. The research establishes a direct correlation between mass immigration, Islamization, and the creation of no-go zones governed by hardline Islamist doctrines.
I will never forgive those in power who let this happen.
“No-go zones are highly correlated to Islam,” the study titled No-Go Zones: Immigration, Islamisation, and the Rise of Parallel Societies finds. It warns that such zones are the result of Muslim demographic concentration, “rigid” Islamist ideologies, and an insular retreat from civic norms.
“These zones are not merely spatial anomalies but spatial-material manifestations of socio-religious disintegration in contexts of high migration from Muslim-majority regions,” the study published by New Direction—Foundation for European Conservatism in March concludes.
It finds that 63 percent of jihadi terrorists who attacked Europe between 2010 and 2025 had a “verified link” to a no-go zone and notes that these areas, with high rates of youth unemployment, “offer fertile ground for Salafist propaganda, which presents an alternative and valorizing identity.”
Civil War On the Horizon
If the trend is not reversed, the “risk of violent confrontations is real,” the research predicts. It cites Prof David Betz, from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, warning: “Civil war thus emerges as a dual threat: military and security-related on the one hand, civilizational and cultural on the other.”
The research credits Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum, with first popularizing the nomenclature of “no-go zones” in academic and public discourse.
In a blog compilation titled “The 751 No-Go Zones of France,” Pipes wrote that the French government alone counted 751 “partial no‑go zones,” since state representatives, especially the police, “can only enter with massive power for temporary periods of time.”
The New Direction study, however, laments scholarly reluctance to use the term. Instead, it notes, academics prefer substituting “no-go zones” with phrases like “parallel societies,” “ethnic enclaves,” or “zones of urban marginality.”
The research focuses on seven EU countries where no-go zones are most reported: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, and the Netherlands. It cites findings from the Migration Research Institute, Budapest, which estimates that there are now 900 to 1,000 areas across Europe exhibiting the key characteristics of no-go zones.
Eastern Europe Spared the Threat of No-Go Zones
Using 11 indicators like homicide, sexual violence, riots, antisemitism, attacks on police or firefighters, and state withdrawal, the New Directions study classifies the areas into low-risk zone, high-risk zone, confirmed no-go zone, severe no-go zone, and critical no-go zone.
The indicators classify localities such as Saint-Denis/Aubervilliers and La Castellane (Marseille) in France, Molenbeek in Belgium, and Malmö and Rosengård in Sweden as “critical” no-go zones. Neukölln in Berlin, Raval in Barcelona, Borgerhout in Antwerp, Aurora in Turin, and Angered in Gothenburg are classified as “severe” no-go zones. Rome’s Termini Station, within walking distance from the Vatican, is classified as a “high-risk” zone.
Muslims are “markedly overrepresented” in no-go zones with an average of 29%, the study finds. European countries “with the highest national concentrations of Muslim populations also appear to be those with the highest density of no-go zones.” But countries with lower Muslim populations, like Hungary or the Czech Republic, exhibit few to no comparable zones.
“While Western intelligence agencies struggle with complex radicalization chains, online jihadist propaganda, and ghettoized suburbs where law enforcement faces resistance, Central Europe has been spared such phenomena. There are no Salafi mosques under surveillance, no jihadi recruitment networks, and no community enclaves operating under different norms in Warsaw, Budapest, or Bucharest,” the study observes.
Parallel Societies Dominated by Islamic Law
“Sweden has, like many Western European countries, also suffered from mass immigration and thus Islamization,” Kent Ekeroth, an economist and a former Sweden Democrats MP, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). “Even though the severity of no-go zones differs between countries and areas, we have about 65 of them, according to the police. They, however, use the phrase ‘particularly vulnerable areas,’ which, of course, is a euphemism.”
The no-go zones also present a threat to civil society, as Islamic structures are creating parallel normative systems that operate independently of national laws, with Sharia courts and patrols of Sharia police enforcing Islamic dress and gender norms, experts note.
“Traditional Islamic norms, when positioned as replacements for civil law, pose a threat to universal freedoms and human rights,” the study notes. As an example, it reports that an estimated 578,000 women and girls in Europe have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM).
The Islamized zones have become crucibles of collusion with left-wing parties, the study finds. Leftist blocs exploit the Islamized zones as electoral vote-banks while jettisoning their original values of secularism, universalism, feminism, and LGBTQ rights in favor of an Islamic agenda, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and support for fighting “Islamophobia” and the hijab.
In 2016, three parliamentarians raised the question of no-go zones in the EU parliament, citing Daniel Pipes, who was vilified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2015 for discussing the issue. The lawmakers asked if the European Commission was aware of the existence of no-go zones in Europe, “where general laws do not apply, and other areas in which women are in practice unable to move about freely.” Officials evaded the question by declaring the issue was “outside the scope of competences of the Commission.”
“In essence, this problem is not new, and everyone with a working brain cell and some decency has seen the writing on the wall. Now we have to live with the consequences, and I will never forgive those in power who let this happen,” said Ekeroth, who has written for FWI.
“How encouraging,” responded Daniel Pipes, “that an institution such as New Directions, the think tank of mainstream conservatives in the European Parliament, has taken up the sensitive issue of Muslim no-go zones. Perhaps, one day, this will lead to changes in policy.”
