Pat Robertson claims Islam is ‘demonic’ and ‘not a religion’ but an economic and political system

Controversial conservative Christian Pat Robertson doubled down Tuesday on claims that Islam is not a religion.

According to Right Wing Watch, Robertson, an elder statesman of the evangelical movement, made the inflammatory claim during an episode of his TV program, “The 700 Club.”

“Every time you look up – these are angry people, it’s almost like it’s demonic that is driving them to kill and to maim and to destroy and to blow themselves up,” Robertson said of Islam. “It’s a religion of chaos.”

He went on to say, “I hardly think to call it a religion, it’s more of – well, it’s an economic and political system with a religious veneer.”

This is hardly the first time Robertson has spoken out on Islam.

ThinkProgress points to an incident, after Major Nidal Malik massacred his fellow soldiers in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, when Robertson claimed not only that Islam is “not a religion,” but also that he sees it as “a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination.”

In related comments this past September, Robertson joked that a caller to the “The 700 Club” should become a Muslim so he could be disrespectful to his wife.

Huffington Post, 13 February 2013