Brigitte Bardot’s Anti-Muslim Rant

Bardot’s Anti-Muslim Rant
from Pickled Politics by Sid

Younger readers amongst you may not have heard of Brigitte Bardot. When I was growing up in the 70s, I spent many blissful evenings, after the parents had gone to bed, rewinding and replaying certain, erm, educational scenes on the VCR from And God Created Woman. She was one of the world’s most beautiful women and a star in the 50s and 60s in a string of films that made her a world famous celebrity. Nowadays she is more famous for her being a deranged animal rights activist and a vocal critic of gays, immigration, modern art and politicians but most of all of Muslims and the “Islamicisation of France”. Yes, she needs to blog.

Ms Bardot, who is now 73, has been fined 15,000 euros (£12, 000) for inciting racial hatred over her controversial remarks about Islam and Muslims. This is the fifth time Bardot has been prosecuted for ranting about her least favourite religion.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was “destroying our country and imposing its acts”.

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: “I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot.”

Muslims traditionally mark the festival of Eid al-Adha by slaughtering an animal (usually a sheep or a cow) to commemorate the prophet Abraham’s willingness to slaughter his son Isaac by following the command by God (which he saw in a dream).

Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the “Islamisation of France”.

Now there are many Muslims who abhor the whole slaughterhouse experience of Eid-al-Adha. The commercialisation and the gross one-upmanship of “my sheep is bigger than yours” is grotesque. I personally find it repulsive being in Bangladesh when the entire city of Dhaka begins to smell like an abattoir.

So I do agree with Bardot’s qualms but she is obviously using her distate of this tradition to vent her rather ugly sentiments against an entire group of people. However, I wonder if penalising the old dear is giving more ammunition to the anti-PC knuckledraggers, who will simply view this as limitation of freedom of expression.