The late former sex symbol and actress Brigitte Bardot was an inveterate animal advocate. Year after year she railed against Eid al-Adha and halal slaughter in her native France, telling the press, "1,000 sheep were slaughtered last month only 300 yards from my house," in 1996.
To thank Allah for sparing Ibrahim's child from death, Muslim families sacrifice sheep, goats, cows, buffaloes and camels in public on the holiday. In 2017, news outlets photographed rivers of blood in Bangladesh and a photo of a little girl dressed in her best clothes, standing in a street of blood. For animal lovers Eid al- Adha is the saddest day of the year.
When Bardot and the president of Tunisia's Society for the Protection of Animals approached French Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre in the 1990's about the outdoor, ritual slaughter he reportedly said he could not apply French humane slaughter laws to the event because he feared backlash and being termed anti-Muslim.
Ritual slaughter, both halal and kosher, in which animals are not stunned and therefore not spared the pain of suffering, has been hotly debated in Europe, sometimes pitting animal advocates against religious figures.
Bardot's international work through the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals cut a wide swath, protecting horses, seals, dolphins, dogs, bears, tigers, rhinos, fighting bulls and food and lab animals.
Nevertheless, in 2008, Bardot was convicted of inciting racial/religious hatred for a letter she wrote to then Interior Minister of France Nicolas Sarkozy objecting to the ritual slaughter of sheep in France by slitting their throats with no anesthesia. A culture that perpetrates was "imposing its habits" upon France she wrote. Her trial ended with a conviction and fine of --15,000.
In 2019, she was c harged with racial hatred, this time for objecting to cruel animal treatment by indigenous people on the French island of Re'union in a letter she wrote to the island's prefect, Amaury de Saint-Quentin.
Censoring of news to prevent sentiment that could cast Islam in a bad light is hardly limited to Brigitte Bardot or animals news. It buried the fate of the 86-year-old French Catholic priest Jacques Hamel who was beheaded in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in 2016 and the beheading of French middle school teacher Samuel Paty in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in 2020 both by religious zealots.
Unlike most aging sex symbols who retire in obscurity, Bardot used her notoriety to save legions of animals from suffering. She will be missed.
(Article changed on Dec 28, 2025 at 2:12 PM EST)
