Tocqueville’s career as an author and politician, on the one hand, and France’s establishment of a colonial empire in North Africa, on the other, coincide chronologically, and the interest that the former devotes to Islam is certainly not alien to this simultaneity. Insofar as he is aware of the importance of religion for the cohesion and good functioning of a society, Tocqueville knows very well that France cannot ignore Islam in the colonization of North Africa and, above all, must not offend the religious feelings of Muslims. On October 22, 1843, he explicitly wrote to Arthur de Gobineau that his study of the Quran should be understood in the context of the colonisation of Algeria a few years earlier (OC IX, 69).