Crusade and mission. The Islamophobia of French Catholic Anti-Semites during the nineteenth century

In this article we analyse how French Catholic Anti-Semites perceived Islam during the nineteenth century, to which end we examine the works Louis de Bonald, Louis Veuillot, Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux and D. Kimon devoted to Islam. The aim of this exercise is, firstly, to improve our knowledge of the European image of Islam in the nineteenth century, focusing on a ideological trend that has hitherto aroused scant interest among scholars. Secondly, this article will enhance our understanding of anti-Semitism as an ideology and a political movement, showing how Catholic anti-Semites, far from being solely obsessed with the Jewish peril, were also obsessed with other threats, primarily the Islamic menace. Finally, it attempts to demonstrate that, despite the arguments brandished by many scholars in recent years, anti-Islamic or Islamophobic sentiments are not necessarily based in racial prejudices, but can spring exclusively from religious intolerance. This certainly was the case among nineteenth-century French Catholic anti-Semites. However, their hostility was no less virulent because of that, far from it.