Author:
Publication: Reuters
Date:
Brigitte Bardot, French former film
goddess turned animal rights activist, was quoted on Saturday as criticizing
the "Islamization of France" in her latest book.
The tabloid France Soir newspaper
said Bardot, who has been fined twice for inciting racial hatred, made
the comments in her book "A Scream in the Silence."
"I am against the Islamisation of
France...For centuries our forefathers, the ancients, our grandfathers,
our fathers gave their lives to chase all successive invaders from France,"
the paper quoted her book as saying.
The comments are likely to create
a stir in France, home to five million Muslims, where the rise of radical
Islam in schools has already sparked a heated debate over the wearing of
the traditional Muslim headscarf in the country's secular schools.
Many French commentators expressed
alarm last month when a group styled on Egypt's fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood
won a third of votes for a national Muslim council, set up to gather rival
Muslim groups under an umbrella of moderate leaders.
Defending her comments in an interview
with France Soir, Bardot, 68, denied she was a scandalmonger: "I am a brave
woman who says what she thinks...They're not going to put me in prison,
I hope."
In her heyday in the 1960s, Bardot
was the epitome of French feminine beauty, but after 46 films she turned
her back on the silver screen to concentrate on animal welfare.
No stranger to controversy, in January
1998 she was fined $3,250 for inciting racial hatred in comments about
civilian massacres in Algeria. Four months earlier, a court fined her for
saying France was being overrun by sheep-slaughtering Muslims.
