WASHINGTON, November 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As part of his incessant anti-Muslim campaign, popular U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson said Monday, November 25, that western media and leaders failed to educate Americans about what he claimed was violence in the Qur’an and Islamic history.

In an interview with the Washington Times, Christian preacher and conservative commentator Robertson regretted that U.S. President George Bush once praised Islam as “a religion of peace.”

Unhappy with Bush’s statements, the one-time presidential hopeful, who has been highly critical of Islam in the past, asserted that the president “is not elected as chief theologian.”

“It would have been better for the president to speak only politically about the Islamic world, and not religiously,” he said, alleging this “is leading to needless confusion.”

Robertson claimed that the American public would be better served if the media would investigate the content of the Qur’an and what he alleged are many passages that incite Muslims to kill nonbelievers.

Robertson, whose previous anti-Islam comments have been denounced by Jewish and Muslims groups alike, alleged that violence against Christians in countries such as Sudan and Nigeria arises from Islamic Sharia (law), claiming that violent behavior is tied to Islamic beliefs.

Though Robertson relinquished his Baptist ordination to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, he has taken it up again and describes his primary work as promoting Christianity.

For 18 years, his Christian Broadcasting Network had an Arab-language broadcast station in Lebanon, which he claims “was overrun by Hezbollah.”

“In terms of Islam, I don’t think the issues have been ventilated at all in the press because no one has read the Qur’an,” he claimed.

“I have never advocated ferreting out Muslims in America,” he said. “They are citizens like I am.”

Robertson claimed that if American Muslims are funneling money to Hamas, a Palestinian resistance group dubbed by the U.S. and some European countries as a “terrorist” organization, “they ought to be deported.”

U.S. Muslim groups have organized a yearlong project to put a package of books and a PBS video on Islam, all by American authors, in the nation's 16,000 public libraries to promote understanding of the religion.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) reports that supporters have sent in 4,219 “sponsorships” of dollars 150 each to pay for the library package, but the number of libraries accepting them is not yet clear.

“It’s a yearlong campaign, and it will take a year or so to sort that [number] out,” said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.

Last week, Hooper said on a New York radio show that conservative religious leaders such as Robertson were “equivalent” to Osama bin Laden because they want to divide the world into a religious war.

When asked whether Christian leaders would urge killing members of a different faith as bin Laden has done, Hooper said: “Given the right circumstance, these guys would do the same in the opposite direction.”

He also confirmed reports that a Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, donated dollars 500,000 to CAIR for the educational push.

“I think most of it is going for the library project,” Mr. Hooper said.

Hooper said a positive image of Islam is important to protect the civil rights of Muslims in the United States.

He cited a recent FBI report that “hate crimes” against people of Middle Eastern ethnicity had increased from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001 across the country.

Robertson claimed that his main business is not Islam but Christian evangelism.

“I don’t want to change my ministry and become some kind of Muslim fighter,” he alleged.

“I don’t want to alienate Muslim people around the world,” said Robertson, adding that Muslims want more information about the West and even Christianity.

He claimed that Islam is “a deeply held religious belief pushed by mullahs all over the world” as a basis for attacking Jews and Christians.

“Maybe we can counter it by American propaganda. Maybe we can counter it by love,” Robertson alleged.

Robertson’s comments were just the latest in a string of anti-Islamic remarks from prominent U.S. conservative Christians in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Earlier the hate speech of Baptist minister Jerry Falwell, who in a television interview last month called the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) “a terrorist,” resulted in the death of 8 people in India.

His comments sparked international outrage and deadly riots in the Indian city of Bombay. Falwell later apologized.