The claim by a former government minister earlier this week that parts of London and Birmingham with large Muslim populations are “no-go areas” has highlighted the enduring myth that there are UK neighbourhoods and towns unsafe for white people.

Paul Scully, the MP for Sutton and Cheam in Greater London, later retracted his suggestion that Tower Hamlets and Sparkhill were unsafe for non-Muslims to enter, made during a BBC interview about allegations of anti-Muslim sentiments within the Conservative party. But he also defended invoking the Islamophobic trope on the grounds that people told him they perceived there to be a threat.

Rightwing politicians and commentators in the US, the UK and Europe have promoted the notion of such Muslim-controlled areas since the early 2000s. Initially, it was usually connected to claims about Islam posing an existential threat to white western civilisation in the wake of Islamist terrorist attacks. But it was later cited in fears about community cohesion and racial and religious segregation, and wider debates about immigration.

Joe Mulhall, the director of research at the anti-fascism organisation Hope Not Hate, said that over the past two decades the no-go zone myth – often associated with fears that these places were governed by sharia law – had gradually spread from niche extreme and populist rightwing spaces, including the Norwegian white nationalist Anders Breivik’s manifesto, US conservative thinktanks and Fox News, into mainstream Conservative politics.