Neighborhoods throughout France that the government has ceded to Muslim control are feared to be breeding grounds for terrorists like those who struck the satirical newsweekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, killing 12 people.
"These 'no-go' zones are essentially breeding grounds for radicalism, and it’s a very big problem," Soeren Kern, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, told
FoxNews.com. "These are areas where essentially the French government has lost control."
Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, posed this question to Newsmax: "If I were trying to run a terror network in Europe, or an Islamist terror network in Europe, would I try to base it in areas where I thought I was not going to be observed or where I might have cover where people are afraid to go?
"I think the question kinds of answers itself," he said.
Created by the French government in 1996, 751 "sensitive urban zones" are sprinkled throughout the country, Fox reports. They generally are low-income areas with widespread crime and other ills similar to the inner cities of the United States — and police do not go there without heavy back-up.
As many as 40 percent of France's five million people live in the zones, Fox reports. The country has the largest number of Muslims living in Europe.
In some communities, French law is ceded to Islamic law regarding property disputes — as well as on such issues as adultery and divorce, according to Fox.
"These 'no-go' zones might be seen as the epicenters of nonassimilation in France," Eberstadt, AEI's Henry Wendt scholar in political economy, told Newsmax.
"The whole question of assimilation and the failure of assimilation can hardly be avoided after the terrorist attacks that Paris has suffered. Most observers would say that the assimilation process has on the whole been pretty successful in France and in most of the rest of Europe — but you only need a little falange to ruin your whole day."
The two gunmen who stormed the magazine's offices — one of whom yelled "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great" in Arabic — and brandishing Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles claimed that they were members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.
According to witnesses, brothers Cherif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34, spoke fluent French — indicating that they might have been home-grown terrorists who received help from the al-Qaida group or others,
The Washington Times reports.
"There are no-go areas not just in Paris, but all over France, where they are effectively in control," Robert Spencer, who directs JihadWatch.org, told the Times. The nonprofit group monitors Muslim extremists.
The no-go zones have been a hotbed of violence in recent years, Fox reports.
In 2005, for instance, immigrant youths and police clashed for three weeks after the accidental deaths of two teens in an impoverished Paris suburb during a sweep by authorities.
Rioting erupted in nearly 300 French towns and suburbs — even spreading into Belgium and Germany — and schools, thousands of cars and community centers were torched.
Nearly 3,000 people were arrested, with damages estimated at 200 million euros.
Eberstadt told Newsmax that the problem stems from France's refusal to assimilate Muslims into the larger society.
"The French government has treated information about different ethnicities, different religions … like the way the Soviets used to their military budget: they hide it all," he said. "They suppress it all."
In so doing, he said, France operates under the "theory that anybody can come from any place in the world and from any walk of life and be made into a Frenchman."
Eberstadt described that as "a noble ideal" — but one that is "misguided" and is "a way of closing your eyes at the pinnacle of government power. … It's kind of a holiday from history.
"There has never been anything like a clinical assessment in France or elsewhere in Europe of where assimilation is going well, where it's not going well and how come," he added. "If one turns away from that, you know what's going to happen."
And referencing the Charlie Hebdo attack, Eberstadt told Newsmax that you don't need very many angry Muslims from these no-go areas to wreak havoc on the rest of a large community.
"You only need a little bit of falange to ruin your whole day," he reiterated. "The ability of just a handful of people to throw a great civilization into turmoil or chaos can’t be underestimated.
"You really don't need a lot of people to paralyze a big city."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.