Pat Robertson is a Bigot

Pat Robertson continues to get emboldened by the success of the right-wing extremist Christian/Republican coalition. Now he is speaking openly about his obvious bigotry against Muslims and Jews. We already know he is prejudiced towards homosexuals, atheists, or anyone who supports the ACLU. Somehow Jewishness and ACLU are somehow connected in his twisted mind. Here is an excerpt from the LA Times:

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Pat Robertson — who founded the Christian Coalition[, the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network] — also said he would be wary of appointing Muslims to top positions in the U.S. government, including judgeships.


His comments on Islam drew a heated response from Muslim leaders, who criticized them as racist and inaccurate.


Another conservative Christian leader, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon...said he was inclined to agree with Robertson's view of Islam.

Juan Cole advocates pariah status for Pat Robertson and any politician who stands on a stage with him. He also advocates for a boycott against all sponsors of the 700 Club and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Informed Comment

Robertson also implied that Jews are unfit to serve on the Supreme Court because some of them defend the ACLU, which he equates with defending Communism. The anti-Jewish bigotry among some evangelicals that codes Jews as a "cultural elite" promoting non-Christian values just drips from his words. I give the relevant parts of the interview below.


Too right, that Robertson should be a political pariah after this performance. I say we hold accountable every politician that shares a stage with him. I say we target the advertisers for his insidious television show for a nationwide boycott. I say we draw the line right here. In Robertson's warped little world, all Muslims are dangerous and all liberal Jews are proto-Communists. And if we don't speak out, his world is about to become our world.

[...]
Here is what Jefferson actually wrote, in his 1777 Draft of a
Bill for Religious Freedom:

...that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right . . .

George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him:

"If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect - or they may be Atheists ..."

[...]
John Locke had already advocated civil rights for non-Christians in his Letter on Toleration:

Thus if solemn assemblies, observations of festivals, public worship be permitted to any one sort of professors [adherents], all these things ought to be permitted to the Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Arminians, Quakers, and others, with the same liberty. Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing.

The greatest leaders in America's history have spoken out against religious intolerance, yet an extremist Christian Right is allowed to advocate bigotry openly? If there is an anti-Christ, surely Pat Robertson works for him.