Bobby Jindal doesn't know what he's talking about - CNN.com
(CNN)Gov. Bobby Jindal has been speaking in London recently, and he startled quite a number of people in the House of Commons when he talked about "no-go zones" in Britain, places where Sharia law trumps British law.
He
announced confidently to a group that included a number of British parliamentarians that the police in the United Kingdom don't dare to tread in these zones, where Sharia law is widely used. "Nonassimilationist 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," he said.
This is the sort of ill-informed fantasy that plays well in certain right-wing circles. This probably works for Jindal back home in Louisiana.
Oddly enough,
Fox News got into trouble recently on the "no-go zone" nonsense, too, as when Steve Emerson, a so-called terrorism expert, explained to the American masses that Birmingham, a major British urban center, was populated entirely by Muslims and that "non-Muslims just simply don't go in."
British Prime Minister David Cameron
correctly labeled him "a complete idiot,"and Emerson's
remark caused a spokesperson for the network to admit that Muslim "no-go zones" don't actually exist, not in Britain, not in Europe.
Needless to say, there are places where a lot of Muslim immigrants live in close proximity, and outsiders might feel uncomfortable walking around. The same would be true for parts of America where you might feel uncomfortable walking around if you were, say, black or white -- it would depend on the neighborhood. (An African American colleague of mine recently told me that her sons, in their 20s, often feel threatened in white neighborhoods, and I don't doubt the truth of this.)
It's not unusual for socio-economic, even racial or ethnic, groups to cluster. My own grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in 1912, and they lived for some years in Italian ghettos in New York. Most immigrant groups start in ghettos somewhere, and many of them never get out.
But the question of Sharia law is interesting. Unofficial Sharia courts will be found in Europe, here and there. But these arbitration bodies don't trump the legal system of the country where they occur. An article in The Economist noted, in fact, that there have long been rabbinical courts in Jewish neighborhoods in Britain -- not a dissimilar sort of thing.
There are even places in the United States where Christians can work out their disputes in a kind of extrajudicial manner. Family law, for instance, is often the issue here, and there are
cultural values that play intothe need for this kind of culturally inflected arbitration. That in some Muslim neighborhoods there might be an accommodation to Sharia law seems not surprising, and this doesn't mean that sooner or later we can expect adulterous women to be stoned to death in Birmingham or thieves to have their hands lopped off in East London.
Blasphemy will not soon lead to the gas chamber in Europe -- indeed, capital punishment is not legal in any European country (or any civilized country, for that matter, except for the USA).
Getting back to Gov. Jindal, one has to wonder what prompted his ignorant outburst. Was this a lame attempt to play into the broad public fears of radical Islam that have arisen in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings? If so, that's not good enough for a politician with any shred of integrity.
In my view, Jindal immediately disqualified himself from ever holding a national political office by making such a bizarre statement, though it hasn't stopped any number of American politicians with bizarre notions from winning major national offices in the past. Such behavior does, however, embarrass this country in the court of world opinion.
The British, and most European countries, have struggled to accommodate Muslim immigrants, but they have nevertheless welcomed them in large numbers. For the most part, these immigrants have behaved well, despite the fear of their traditions and beliefs that leads to crazy exaggerations by politicians such as Jindal.
There have been isolated and gruesome incidents of terrorism -- the murder of a British soldier, Lee Rigby, in the spring of 2013 comes to mind, or the
vicious attacksin London of July 7, 2005, which left 52 dead and over 700 injured. The British have had to confront terror, and they've done so without vilifying large parts of their own population. Indeed, they've been forced to come to terms with what I would call British Exceptionalism -- the old imperial feeling that nobody who is not British can possibly lead a civilized way of life. (As Americans, of course, we struggle with our own feelings of exceptionalism, preferring to think that our ways are always the best and truest ways.)
Jindal
was apparently on a 10-day "fact finding" mission designed to bolster his credentials for a possible run at the White House in 2016. He's not as stupid as he sounds, in fact. (Indeed, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he must have learned something.)
Let's hope that he is a quick study, and that he learns how not to say idiotic things in public that cause a good deal of offense, if not harm, to unsuspecting people, fueling hatred rather than coming to terms.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CNN Correspondent Confronts Bobby Jindal Over False Comments About Muslims | ThinkProgress
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) struggled to substantiate his claims that European cities have been taken over by Muslim extremists during an interview with CNN correspondent Max Foster on Monday in London. Jindal stood by the charge even as other prominent conservatives
admitted that the allegations had no factual basis.
“There are neighborhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils that is wrong, we all know there are neighborhoods where police are less likely to go into,” Jindal said, referring to so-called “no-go” zones or areas that are too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. The claim has echoed throughout conservative media in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Foster challenged the assertion repeatedly, explaining that, “you need to have sort of proper facts to back that up.” “I’ve lived here a long time,” he said. “I don’t know of any no-go zones for non-Muslims.”
But Jindal insisted that such areas do exist and instead of offering any additional details or locations he blamed the radical left for pretending “this problem is not here.” Pressed again by Foster for any specific areas that are unsafe for non-Muslims, Jindal simply offered, “I think your viewers know that absolutely there are places where police are less likely to go.” Watch it:
The “no-go” zones claim have been most prominently
floated by Fox News terrorism expert Steven Emerson, but has been widely debunked by many Europeans, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In fact, Emerson himself
later apologized for the comments and Fox News issued four on-air apologies for its non-factual claims.
“To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country, and no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion,” Fox News anchor Julie Banderas said. “We deeply regret the errors and apologize to any and all who may have taken offense including the people of France and England.”
---------------------------------
Jindal claims he is not an Indian but he sure talks out of his *** like one.
Anyway he must have been drumming up some controversy for his intent to run for the Republican nomination in 2016.
Fucking hell. Mother. Fucking. Hell.
I feel so darn ashamed to be a muslim after reading this article.
This is the fault of muslims as a whole I believe.
The muslim elite created lavish worlds for themselves while the poorer strata suffered, and in there vying enemies who sought to create a disturbance in the world found a perfect opportunity to create this sort of a disaster.
i suspect that this could have either been a work of the Illuminati (call me a retard for believing it but I do think there is a group of ultra rich neoconservative secret society that does this shit) or just massive idiocy and lack of intellect on our part.
Why is it that everyone else manages to accept others as they are irrespective of color, hue, caste, religion etc but Muslims always have problems with others?
The majority of muslims in the world are a disgrace to Islam and I think the real, peaceful, tolerant Islam that was preached by our Prophet only exists in the history books now and neither do I think we can get it back.
Such idiots who want to create their own mini time bombs in childrens' minds and ghettoes for Muslims should be arrested by large, put in a large Auschwitz type facility and gassed.
---------
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do".
It is a BS article.