April 18, 2008

The French can be exasperating or exhilarating. They exhilarated a lot of people when they elected Nicholas Sarkozy as president and he promptly declared his love for America. But now they’ve put the aging actress Bridgette Bardot on trial for speaking her mind.

And not just speaking her mind. She has committed the crime of telling the truth about radical Islam. She is charged with “inciting racial hatred” because of her remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors want a Paris court to find her guilty of a crime for saying the Muslim community is “destroying our country and imposing its acts.” France has a significant Muslim population, much of it poor, uneducated and increasingly radical.

When Muslims in France lash out against Jews, Christians, Westerners and especially America, are they charged with a hate crime? No, they are not. Why not? The answer is that we think they won’t kill us if we make nice with them. We’re fooling ourselves and encouraging the killers. Bardot is telling the truth.

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Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.