FRANCE"S BARDOT DENOUNCES MUSLIM 'INVASION'
PARIS (Reuter) Friday April 26, 1996 - BrigitteBardot, sex icon turned animal rights activist, said Friday she mightbe forced to emigrate because France had too many Muslim immigrants.
Bardot's column in theconservative newspaper Le Figaro denounced immigrants in unusually virulentterms, highlighting her long campaign against the Muslim ritual slaughterof sheep.
Labeling herself ``a Frenchwoman of old stock,'' the film star pointed toher grandfather and father's battles against German invaders in two worldwars, and to her own rejection of lucrative Hollywood offers during her``cinematic glory.''
Bardot wrote: ``Andnow my country, France, my homeland, my land, is with the blessing of successivegovernments again invaded by a foreign, especially Muslim, over-populationto which we pay allegiance.''
``We have to submit against our will to this Muslim overflow. From yearto year, we see mosques flourish across France, while our churchbells fallsilent because of a lack of priests,'' added Bardot,who is married to a supporter of the extreme-right National Front whichcampaigns on an anti-immigrant platform.
Bardot, who has givenher name and support to an animal protection foundation, repeated in goryprose her condemnation of Muslim sheep-slaughtering rituals during the ``atrocious''Aid-el-Kebir feast of the sacrifice.
``Tens of thousands of poor beasts whose throats are slit...with bladesthat are more or less sharpened, by clumsy 'sacrificers' who have to repeattheir gesture several times, while kids splashed with blood bathe in thismagma of terror, of blood squirting from badly-slit jugulars,'' she wrote.
Bardot has in the pastattacked the celebration of the feast in France by more than two millionMuslims, mostly North African Arab immigrants. Leaders of France's Muslimcommunity have hit back, saying her attack was politically-motivated.
After quoting 19th century novelist Emile Zola on the love humans owe toanimals, Bardot threatened to go into exile unless authorities acted onher grievances.
``Could I be forced in the near future to flee my country which has turnedinto a bloody and violent country, to turn expatriate, to try and find elsewhere,by myself becoming an emigrant, the respect and esteem which we are alasrefused daily?.''
Three years ago, the screen legend had said that the extreme right-wingviews of the man she married in 1992 could cause the break-up of their marriage,her fourth.
``I argue with Bernard (d'Ormale), I find the National Front too extremist...Iwould've been better off falling in love with a shoe salesman,'' she said.
Bardot abruptly endedher film career in 1972 and has since devoted herself nearly full-time toanimal welfare causes.
Copyright © 1996 Reuters
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