From France 3:
Un feu de végétation a provoqué l’incendie de l’église de Montenach en Moselle à la frontière Luxembourgeoise ce jeudi 30 avril 2026. Une partie du clocher s’est effondrée, la charpente a été entièrement brûlée, 60 pompiers et 40 véhicules étaient engagés pour circonscrire le sinistre maîtrisé en fin d’après-midi.
News that a brushfire in eastern France had spread to a church ought to be a subject of merely local interest – however, images of the blaze, but not links to the news reports, are currently doing the rounds on social media, based on the assumption that when churches catch fire the reason must be arson, and that the arsonists must be Muslims, who always get away unobserved and without leaving any incriminating evidence. Followers of the likes of Tommy Robinson congratulate themselves for penetrating the mystery through their superior deductive abilities.
This is a regular occurence – back in 2019, Full Fact noted the existence of a map that purported to show acts of arson at churches all around France:
A post on Facebook claims that a heavily annotated map of France shows how many churches have been “destroyed” there in the last four years. It has had over 1,700 shares.
However:
The pins on the map don’t just show churches that were “destroyed”; they also include vandalism incidents, like graffiti, as well as theft, violent incidents at churches and religious buildings, plus incidents where priests were attacked or threatened.
The map was promoted five years later by Darren Grimes, one of Reform UK’s less guarded councillors, in a social media post in which he accused “France’s newcomers” and claimed that it explained the fire at Rouen Cathedral’s spire – a blaze that was most likely caused by a welding spark touching plastic sheeting in the context of works that were going on at the time.
Of course, that does not mean there is no church arson: in 2022 in the UK a teenager named John Brady was given a hospital order for “a string of devastating arson attacks on schools and churches” in Derbyshire, while a man named Ryan Haggerty was jailed for starting a church fire in Glasgow. Fires at churches in Europe, when started deliberately, are almost invariably the work of vandals or pyromaniacs (the 1990s Black Metal-related church attacks in Norway and the occasional self-styled Satanist excepted).
The trend of blaming Muslims for starting church fires without evidence, or even in the teeth of counter-evidence, perhaps began with Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019. Recent cases include the Institution des Chartreux (Chartreux boarding school) in Lyon, France (likely an electrical fault) and the Monastero della Bernaga (Bernaga Monastery) in Lombardy, Italy (also electrical). In the UK, a fire at a Victorian Gothic building in Weymouth last year was taken to be another church fire – in that instance, the structure was actually a former eye hospital that had been converted into a restaurant, giving conspiracists the bonus complaint about the media not calling it a church. Also last year, a church fire in Doirí Beaga, Donegal was falsely attributed to Afghans by Radio Europe; footage of the blaze is still being posted, in one case at least incorrectly relocated across the border to Northern Ireland. One might diagnose apophenia, the tendency to see connections where none exist, were there not so much grift and bad faith involved.
Fires at churches are also useful for building a resentment narrative that arson at mosques is being given too much consideration. Thus when the home secretary wrote last October that “reports today of an attack on a mosque in Peacehaven in East Sussex are deeply concerning”, conspiracist pop duo Right Said Fred rejoined with images of a church fire at St Mary’s Church in Beachamwell, Norfolk (caused by a welding spark) and All Saints Church in Fleet, Hampshire (arson committed by a teenager named Daniel Finnerty in 2015). Populist commentators such as Mike Graham showed more interest in Peacehaven when there was speculation that a Muslim might have done it (1), but less so once white Britons were charged – one of whom, Ricky Ryder, has now admitted arson.
Note
1. Graham was confused due to a case of attempted arson at a mosque in Kettering, Northamptonshire, around the same time. The arsonist in that case was a man named Arif Ali Rafiq, who had absconded during day release from a mental healt unit and reported hearing a voice in his head telling him to commit the offence. The damage was minimal, and he called police himself to report his actions. The incident was conflated with Peacehaven by numerous people on Twitter/X. Internet detectives also misinterpreted a fragment of a taxi-driver speaking Urdu that became attached to footage from Peacehaven.
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