He likened Islam, a religion with 1.6 billion adherents worldwide, to “a cancer” and said that documents recovered from terrorist organizations instruct followers to “get into the bloodstream of the opposition,” which Flynn said means to attack Western nations.

Flynn described himself as a scholar of American history and of religion. He said he had focused many years of study on the influence of religion on the Founding Fathers.

“This Islamic ideology was something they wanted nothing to do with,” he said.