On Fox News, Tucker Carlson averred that “we’re not, I want to be clear, speculating about the cause of this fire.” His guest on the show was Mark Steyn, who talked about the Notre Dame fire by saying that “Christendom is in retreat in Europe” and that the French were especially “godless” even for Europeans. Steyn also brought up the horrific murder of a priest by two ISIS-affiliated terrorists in Normandy in 2016 as well as his own visit to the Basilica of Saint Denis, located “in the heart of what is now a Muslim suburb.” That was a fairly typical Notre Dame take from the “fall of Europe” crowd: even if migrants and Muslims didn’t do it, they sort of did it anyway just by being around. Call it passive terrorism by way of osmosis.

This sort of loose talk is especially irresponsible because church attacks in France are a real problem, with nearly 900 incidents were recorded last year. But it’s important to understand the real sources: Ellen Fantini, director of the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, has said that while some perpetrators are Islamists, others are anarchists or radical feminists. Still others are teenage pranksters or vagrants.