The fake claim that groups of Muslims are responsible for setting fire to five churches in France over the course of a single day has been circulating online. The acts supposedly took place on October 17 when violence erupted across several French cities, marring a series of planned peaceful demonstrations.
The claim has mainly been propagated by accounts known for anti-immigrant and islamophobic rhetoric, some of which have exploited footage of previous protests, taking them out of context.
‘Muslims want to destroy Christianity’
American conspiracy theorist and podcaster Alex Jones made the claim originally via a post on X on October 25. It included a video purporting to be of one of the churches on fire, but the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to geolocate the video to confirm in reality it actually showed a rubbish bin on fire in front of an apartment building in Lyon. In early October, Jones also made the unsubstanciated allegation that Catholic priests had been set alight during the protest led by French high schoolers.
“European heritage and history will soon be nothing but ashes without Remigration”, read a post by a pro-Trump account, MAGA Nation 47, on X. The post featured a video of the Saint-Michel Church in Bordeaux, appearing to be on fire. But this post also used out-of-context images to deceive viewers. The video was actually filmed back in July and it shows a fire that started at a homeless encampment – which did not reach the church. Several media outlets misreported the false claims.
And such stories haven’t just come from the American far-right. The FRANCE 24 Observers team found one of the most widely shared posts to derive from an Italy-based account. In a Facebook post from October 23, a social media user claiming to be Catholic and with a history of Islamophobic posts – Mauro D. – declared five churches had been set on fire the day prior “by Muslims who want to destroy Christianity”. While he didn’t specify details around the location of the churches, his post was shared nearly 10,000 times.
His post featured an image of a fire at the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice. But the photo dates from 2019 when its door caught fire. Media coverage and early findings by the police laboratory indicated possible arson.
Our team contacted the author of the post but he did not respond.
One church fire, cause unknown
In reality, there have been no fires from October 17 attributed to anyone of Muslim faith, Vice President of the Observatory for Religious Heritage, Maxime Cumunel told FRANCE 24 Observers.
The association – which records any damage to religious structures – only recorded a single fire around this period: at Saint-Médard in Fenouillet, a village near Toulouse.
In a statement published on October 21 by the city council and picked up by a number of media outlets, it has not been possible to determine the exact cause of the fire.
Fires affect 20 to 30 churches a year
It isn’t the first time that false information about church fires has circulated in France. Back in July, the FRANCE 24 Observers team looked into misinformation about a fire at a disused church. At the time, the fake news story was shared by far-right Spanish accounts claiming the fire was linked to “mass immigration.”
Maxime Cumunel told our team that there are many causes for church fires – most often to do with disrepair.
“We are talking about numbers that remain relatively low, with only about 20 to 30 structures affected by fire each year,” he shared.
The Observatory for Religious Heritage published a letter on October 21 denouncing several acts of church vandalism that took place amid the general violence on the periphery of the October 17 protests, including “hateful graffiti” left on the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine des Chartreux in Marseille.
In 2025, a total of 843 anti-Christian acts were recorded in France, representing 34% of all recorded anti-religious acts, according to data published by the Ministry of the Interior that cited the Observatory. This represents a 9% increase on 2024. In 87% of such cases, acts involve damage to property (including graffiti, damage, desecration and theft of sacred objects).
“We are seeing an increase in damage to cultural buildings because we are in a period of crisis. Notably, we are seeing the theft of objects made of precious metal, like chalices, because they have market value,” Hadrien Lacoste, vice president of the Observatory told our team.
This story originally appeared on France24
