Islam Not a Religion?

The last time I covered Pat Robertson here on Augoeides, I found myself amazed that his comments regarding creationism actually made sense. However, apparently another such moment was too much to hope for. On a recent episode of Robertson's 700 Club television program the evangelist made the bizarre claim that Islam - the world's second largest religion behind Christianity - is in fact not a religion. It remains to be seem if he ever will articulate a coherent definition that would allow him to explain what features his form of Christianity has that Islam lacks.

"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."

Robertson has apparently confused "Islam" with the extremist form of Wahhabism that inspires terrorist groups like Al Qaida, completely failing to comprehend that Islam as a whole has something like 1.6 billion followers and if they were all violent terrorists engaging in asymmetric warfare we would be totally doomed. More predictably, he also appears to believe that anything other than Christianity is not a religion but rather, well, something else - which renders the whole concept of religious freedom pretty much moot.