The sad truth of the matter is that when I learned of the Paris terror attacks this afternoon, I wasn’t surprised at all. As recently as this past January the mutliple Shari’ah no go zones around Paris were in the news again. These zones are areas which the French authorities have allowed Islamic Shari’ah law to reign supreme. France is not the only country in Europe to have these zones. Earlier this year, respected Pepperdine law professor and author, Daniel Pipes reported on the European no go zone problem in National Review.

“In a 2006 weblog entry, I called Muslim enclaves in Europe no-go zones as a non-euphemistic equivalent for the French phrase Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones. No-go zones subsequently became standard in English to describe Muslim-majority areas in West Europe.”

However, it later came to Pipes attention when he visited many European cities that he had painted a picture that was not entirely accurate by using a literal English translation of the French names for these zones. He also confesses that though the governments have not completely ceded rule of these areas, they have given Islamic law priority  in these areas since they allowed Shariah courts to be set up in them and some countries-such as Britain-have given these courts parity with their own. But Pipes does point out that these Muslim dominant neighborhoods in many Western European cities are thus far unique and unamed mixes of regional laws.

“On the one hand, West European states can intervene anywhere and at any time in their sovereign territory. As the shoot-out in Verviers and the subsequent raids elsewhere in Belgium suggest, their overwhelming advantage in force — including military, intelligence, and police — means they have not ceded control. On the other hand, governments often choose not to impose their will on Muslim-majority areas, allowing them considerable autonomy, including in some cases the sharia courts that Emerson mentioned. Alcohol and pork are effectively banned in these districts, polygamy and burqas are commonplace, police enter only warily and in force, and Muslims get away with offenses illegal for the rest of population.”

In 2013 Paris was reminded that the French tradition of non-acceptance of immigrants was the touchpoint for what became known as “car b ques”. Disenfranchised Muslim immigrant youth took to the streets during that New Years Eve and torched over 1,100 cars in protest of French society’s reluctance to hire them or even accept them as French-even if they were born in France. As if that was not shocking enough, we found out later that approximately 40,000 cars are burned in France every year.

“Car burnings are increasingly commonplace in all French cities and are often attributed to shiftless young Muslims who reside in suburban slums known as banlieues. French authorities are especially eager to avoid a repetition of the riots in 2005, when the deaths of two Muslim teenagers in the banlieue of Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris sparked weeks of looting and car-burning, and led to the imposition of a state of emergency.”

So, unforunately I was not at all surprised. But I was, as many around the world should be, deeply saddened for the French people. As an American I know what it is like when thousands of your citizens are slaughtered in the name of some backward, arcane war of ideologies. I was proud to hear that the President of France took a hard stance and declared a state of emegency, closing French borders immediately. Hopefully, the French police and military will be able to hunt down the perpetrators of this latest round of horror and bring them to justice.

In the meantime, I ask the leaders of the other Western European countries to take notice of what happend in Paris last night and remember that when they are deciding whether or not to allow the “refugees” from Syria to settle in their countries. I am starting to think that sending troops to win back a part of their own country and depositing these refugees within their own area over there is a grand idea.

While I wish to help those who truly need a refuge, when we see Paris burning and 140 innocent French lives lost to terror, it does make the stark reality of the situation hard to ignore. The barbarians are at the gates-will we protect Western ideals or simply let them slaughter us like so many lambs?