Nigel Farage tells Fox News there are no-go zones for non-Muslims in France | Politics | The GuardianNigel Farage tells Fox News there are no-go zones for non-Muslims in France | Politics | The Guardian










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Nigel Farage



Nigel Farage tells Fox News there are no-go zones for non-Muslims in France









French embassy in London says Ukip leader’s remarks are comparable to Steven Emerson’s Birmingham gaffe














Nigel Farage said 'we have allowed big ghettos to develop' and 'that is where sharia law has come in'. Photograph: Simon James/GC Images




Rajeev Syal


Tuesday 13 January 2015 18.18 EST







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The French embassy in London has compared comments made by Nigel Farage in which he told Fox News there are now no-go zones for non-Muslims in most big cities in France to those made by an American pundit who claimed on the TV network that the whole of Birmingham was off-limits to non-Muslims.
The Ukip leader, in inflammatory comments, which are likely to prompt further claims that he is seeking to exploit the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, also claimed “big ghettos” had been allowed to develop across Europe while governments turned a blind eye to issues including the child-grooming scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale, female genital mutilation and the application of sharia law.
A spokesperson for the embassy said: “Of course it is not true to say that there are no-go areas in France. To give you an idea of how wide of the mark those comments are, we could compare them to those by the American journalist who recently said that non-Muslims simply did not go any longer to Birmingham: in both cases those statements are obviously totally untrue. The ‘marche républicaine’ on Sunday was an excellent example of the unity of the French population when facing terrorism.”
Earlier this week, the self-described terrorism expert Steven Emerson claimed on Fox News that non-Muslims did not go to Birmingham, which he said had become a totally Muslim city.
David Cameron responded by calling him a complete idiot.
Farage’s comments follow several other interventions over the last five days, which have been criticised by David Cameron and Ed Miliband for attempting to make political gains from the murders of French citizens by Islamists.
In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News, Farage was asked by an interviewer why there are areas of France where non-Muslims can no longer go.



Farage replied: “It isn’t just France, it is happening right across Europe. We have got no-go zones across most of the big French cities.”
The MEP continued by listing a number of problems, which he blamed on poor leadership by successive UK governments.
“We have been turning a blind eye to preachers of hate coming here and saying things for which most of the rest of us would be arrested,” he said.
“In parts of northern England, we have seen the sexual grooming scandal of underage girls committed by Muslim men, in the majority, and for all of these things we have seen the law not being applied equally.
“We have seen the police forces not actually doing their job because we have suffered from moral cowardice. We have, through mass immigration and not checking the details of people who have come to our countries, we have allowed big ghettos to develop. When it comes to the big issues we have been led very badly,” he said.
He said “tens of thousands of young women” had been subjected to female genital mutilation in the UK.
Farage added: “We even, a few years ago, had some quite clear examples where the immigration services were actually allowing women to come into Britain from Pakistan and elsewhere to join polygamous marriages – something that is against our law.
“So wherever you look, wherever you look you see this blind eye being turned and you see the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where sharia law has come in and you know it got so bad in Britain that our last archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of our church, actually said we should accept sharia law.”
In 2008 the then archbishop, Rowan Williams, said the adoption of elements of Islamic sharia law in the UK seemed unavoidable.
Farage was accused last week of trying to score political points by blaming the massacre on multiculturalism and was widely criticised for claiming that a “fifth column” of Islamists existed in the west.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, said that Farage’s comments were wildly inaccurate and exploitative.
“This is the latest in a long line of illogical, factually inaccurate comments from Nigel Farage. He likes to think he is a serious politician, but true leaders do not play the politics of division for electoral gain,” he said.
A Ukip spokeswoman said she could not name the major French cities with no go zones to which Farage referred, but would attempt to contact him to find out. “He may not be contactable tonight,” she said.



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