![Riot in Harehills, Leeds](https://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/leedsriot.jpg)
More than seventeen years ago I wrote about the Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones (ZUS), in France. They are dangerous culturally enriched neighborhoods that firemen and ambulance drivers won’t enter without a police escort, and which the police themselves avoid unless they absolutely have to go there. In English they are commonly referred to as “no-go zones”.
Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote in 2007:
The ZUS represent the perpetually inflamed tissue of the French body politic, with the nightly count of burned vehicles showing up as one of the green squiggles on the vital-signs monitor. Two hundred burned cars, and the youthful patient is having a good day. Five hundred, and the nurse is called to administer a sedative.
But it’s not the patient who goes to sleep; it’s the French public. Everyone is aware of what’s happening, but the magnitude of the crisis and the specifics of the situation are hidden behind a wall of official obfuscation and government-mandated censorship.
Within the ZUS, the gangs of Muslim youths have a free hand to loot, rape, and burn. Police are not allowed to use their weapons to enforce the law, or even to defend themselves. Trying to do his traditional job can put a policemen’s career in jeopardy, as the officers who chased two young criminals into a power substation back in October 2005 discovered.
What is not acknowledged is that France has lost sovereign control over large swathes of its urban territory. The only solution envisioned by French bureaucrats is a quintessentially bureaucratic one. The layers of jargon and classification and commissions and acronyms are like the wall of scar tissue that forms around a foreign substance that can’t be assimilated.
The areas designated as ZUS are effectively acknowledged to be dead. They are no longer part of France. They no longer possess any of the functions of a civitas.
They are the scattered pieces of la France Morte.
In the years since, Sweden has developed its own ZUS, which are now rife in the suburbs of a number of cities and towns, and rival anything that France can boast.
And last night a ZUS made itself known in a neighborhood of Leeds, in West Yorkshire.
In the late 1960s I lived in Harrogate, which is a spa town about twelve miles north of Leeds, in what was then the West Riding. Leeds was the nearest big city to Harrogate, and I visited it occasionally back then. It hadn’t yet become culturally enriched, although its sister city Bradford, just to the west, was the butt of jokes due to the presence of recently arrived “Pakis”. Nowadays, of course, it might as well be a district of Karachi.
The district of Harehills lies near the city center, just east of the A61, the route I used to take to Leeds. Mark Steyn points out that Harehills is also the constituency of a Green Party councilor named Mothin Ali, who recently shouted “Allahu Akbar” after being elected to the borough Council, declaring his victory a “win for the people of Gaza.”
Last night the good “English” people of Harehills got a bit hot under the collar. It seems that some social workers arrived at a home with intention of removing some children and placing them into care. The family raised an uproar, and the neighbors took exception to the government’s actions. They showed their displeasure in the time-honored Muslim fashion: they threw paving stones at the police, overturned a police vehicle, set street furniture on fire, and burned a double-decker bus. The police and the social workers were forced to vacate the area for their own safety, and it wasn’t until several hours later that order was restored.
The Hindustan Times provides a useful summary of the evening’s mostly peaceful events.
The BBC report on the incident is bland and restrained, but I found these pieces interesting:
The press conference heard that Ms [Mayor Tracy] Brabin had been involved in an earlier meeting with “key partners” and a plan was being drawn up to keep Harehills safe.
Ms Brabin said: “The imams and the faith leaders are also getting the message out there that we need to stay calm and ensure we don’t have what we saw, which was frightening, horrible and unacceptable.” [emphasis added]
And also this:
Leeds City Council said it was “immensely grateful” to the individuals who stopped the situation from “worsening”.
The “individuals who stopped the situation from ‘worsening’” are undoubtedly the imams. And when Mayor Brabin met with them — her “key partners” — I’m sure they explained to her what the civil authorities needed to do (or stop doing) to prevent any mostly peaceful incidents in the future.
This process is an example of what used to be called “community cohesion”, which people like Tommy Robinson were always accused of damaging. Community cohesion means that Muslim areas are de facto sharia zones, and lie beyond the reach of English Common Law. Anyone who wants affairs to run smoothly in the Harehills ZUS must negotiate with the community leaders — which means the imams, together with their designated appointees to political positions.
From a practical standpoint, of course, the result will be that children are less likely to be removed and placed into care within the boundaries the Harehills ZUS than they are elsewhere.
Below are two videos with clips of last night’s ructions in Harehills. The first is from the Indian news channel WION:
The second video was published by The Sun:
What I noticed in this footage is that there were hardly any females visible in the frolicking crowds, especially after nightfall. This is to be expected in a sharia zone. Even ethnic English women must be aware of the behavior that Islamic law expects them to exhibit.
![](https://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bar400.gif)
Hat tip: Aeneas.
It is worth pointing out that the original domestic disturbance was, apparently, in a Roma household, although the subsequent rioting drew in a largely Muslim crowd. Romas are, if anything, worth even less as social capital than Muslims. They also tend to dominate in small-scale enterprises which are either criminal or verge on criminality. The Big Issue magazine, for example, was started in London with the intention of the homeless of the city selling the magazine in order to scrape some sort of living, and it was a successful enterprise and not even a bad magazine. Now, it is exclusively sold by Roma gypsies.
Brilliant example of the way Islamic takeover is enforced. Thank you.
In the early days (between Luxor and 9/11) I had hope that publications and blogs like this one would help the Center realize what kind of future it was voting itself into.
We’ve long since passed the point of no return and multiculturalism has morphed into possibly the most infectious, widespread and fanatical religion that history has ever been a witness to.
Blogs such as these function no longer as a warning and no longer act as a bullwark to insanity.
GoV and others like it now simply record the inevitable slide of civilization into depravity and barbarism, so that future intelligence, if it survives, may have a better chance of avoiding the same mistakes.
The Europe of my childhood is finished, the writing is on the wall. We can only hope that Reason will manage to barricade itself in some distant, obscure corner, waiting to sprout while the Darkness eats itself.
ALL BRITISH MP,S DO IS HELP ISLAM GROW WHILE THEY RAPE AND ATTACK BRITISH PEOPLE IN ENGLAND .TIEM, TOO STAND UP AND FIGHT AS IF WE DO NOT WE BECOME LIKE CANADIANS .
It seems that some years ago we reached the point where issues are not dealt with but those who draw attention to the issues are dealt with. Once this has occurred there is only one possible ending – simultaneously an ever increasing totalitarianism and anarchy. Unless authorities are changed for those who are willing to confront reality this is a death spiral.
Only Britain First is clear. Islam is rotten.
So, quoting the great Sean Connery in the Untouchables: “WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO?”
As Mark Gullick (above) points out, the family whose children the social workers wanted to remove, presumably to protect them, were Roma from Romania. Even Tommy Robinson, whom I usually admire, made the mistake of attributing the unrest to Muslims/
For me, it was because I could see Muslims among the rioters.
“For me, it was because I could see Muslims among the rioters.”
Ditto.