I don't have a problem with her complaining. I have a problem with the exact facts not being reported in this thread, which leads to disinformation. I don't have a problem with it being the French, nor Bardot, nor muslims, I just think it'd be a shame if you guys were misinformed from this small fact here and from there let ideas grow on the wrong path.
I'm not afraid of muslims and do see the forest and the trees and the fungus on the bark, too. I grew up in the melting pot of France, I think I mentioned this a bunch of times already, so I won't repeat the details again.
The "problem with Muslims" in France could be resumed (it can't, but ill do it for the sake of conversation here) to a very plain fact that is true in any other country on this planet. Both sides reap what they sow. The french have their peculiarities, so do the maghrebins and other middle easterners, mix it all together in specific quantities and circumstances, and you cook up something that might have been different under a different recipe.
I don't deny that Islam has some (imo) back-asswards principles to it, at very fundamental levels, but getting in that argument would bring out the scholars, against which I have nothing to back what I'm nearly certain of, except about a dozen years lived on and off everywhere between podunk country side villages, dangerous suburbs in the middle of Paris' bowels, and very rich higher class families.
All things considered, my only real problem is with misinformation. Those backasswards muslims you guys rant about are as misinformed about you guys as you guys are about at least a few pretty critical things. It's obvious it's not interesting to study things to such a depth just for the sake of it, but nonetheless that's the only way to make an accurate assessment of things.
You can't take a whole country's miriad of cultural elements and pick one, out of context, to extrapolate everything else from it.
Back to the freedom of speech thing - Bardot's a stupid old b***. There's few ways to say it more accurately. Her problem isn't with criticizing islam or muslims, it's that the TRUE rationale behind her statements is racism, a racism that's the same affront to Good with a capital G that leads the US to do stuff like liberate some ragheads on the other side of the planet, etc.
The author's following novel, Plateforme (2001), earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance, told mostly in the first-person by an aging male arts administrator, with many sex scenes and an approbation of prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and its explicit criticism of Islam and the Muslim faith, together with an interview its author gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations against Houellebecq by several organisations, including France's Human Rights League, the Mecca-based World Islamic League and the mosques of Paris and Lyon. Charges were brought to trial, in circumstances reminiscent of the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses at the end of the 1980s; but a panel of three judges, delivering their verdict to a packed Paris courtroom, acquitted the author of having provoked racial hatred, ascribing Houellebecq's opinions to the legitimate right of criticizing religions.
"... but the fear is allowed to rule." And there's truth to that Gunthr, the everyday average French folk's errors with respect to muslim immigrants are often enough only due to them being afraid of some strange people with strange customs. The problem here is that even though you made a good diagnosis, Bardot's saying something similar, on the surface, is just a coincidence. It's pretty unlikely her intentions are defendable as yours probably are.
Hell, I shouldn't have to argue this.. Check out Jean Marie Le Pen, yourself. That's who Bardot's emulating.
