MONITORING AND COMBATING ISLAMOPHOBIA

A Project of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Pat Robertson

Robertson is a commentator for Christian Broadcasting Network and the co-founder of American Center for Law and Justice. He is a media executive and Baptist minister known for being a key face of Christian conservative politics.

Robertson compared Islam to Nazism on at least two separate occasions, in 2011 and 2013. In 2013, he said of Islam, “it’s almost like it’s demonic” and “it’s a religion of chaos.”

On November 27, 2013, Robertson equated a Muslim with an “unclean spirit” and defended a woman who had asked a Muslim to leave her home saying, “If somebody in truth is worshiping some sort of a demonic presence then that will pervade your home and no you don’t offer hospitality to something like that.”

Following the Boston Marathon bombings, Robertson claimed that the government “refuses to acknowledge the problem of Islam… During the Second World War we didn’t have any problems saying that Hitler was bad, no problem at all saying the Nazis were monsters… Now we’re fighting a war but we refuse to identify our enemy even though it is in plain sight.”

In 2011, Robertson compared Islamophobes to those who opposed the rule of Hitler in Germany, saying “Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don’t want to live under Nazi Germany?… But oh it’s bigoted if we speak out against a force that slowly but surely is trying to exercise domination over the world.”

During the debate over the Murfreesboro Mosque in Tennessee, Robertson asserted that Muslims will bribe local officials to gain influence.

In 2008, Robertson claimed that “Islam is not a religion” but “a political system bent on world domination.”

A Washington Post editorial (2/23/02) says of Robertson: “Mr. Robertson, speaking on his Christian Broadcasting Network’s ‘700 Club’ program, described a veritable infestation of America with violent, subversive Muslims: ‘Our immigration policies are now so skewed towards the Middle East and away from Europe that we have introduced these people into our midst and undoubtedly there are terrorist cells all over them…They want to coexist until they can control, dominate, and then if need be destroy’…Is Mr. Robertson trying to start a pogrom? If so, he’s headed in the right direction.”

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