A deputy assistant to President Donald Trump has refused to say whether Trump believes Islam is a religion.

Sebastian Gorka was queried on NPR after declining to answer the same question in a previous appearance on the programme. According to Politico, he said: 'This is not a theological seminary. This is the White House, and we're not going to get into theological debates.

'If the president has a certain attitude to a certain religion that's something you can ask him, but we're talking about national security and the totalitarian ideologies that drive the groups that threaten America.'

Some US conservatives refuse to characterise Islam as a religion, arguing it is a totalitarian ideology whose adherents are intent on taking over the world.

Trump's new national security adviser HR McMaster is reported to have tried the White House to stop using the phrase 'radical Islamic terrorism' to describe extremist groups. However, Gorka said: 'We're not wavering on this one.' He added that the threat 'is radical Islamic terrorism, and it's never changed, and it will not change'.

He also dismissed the expertise of Obama-era anti-terrorism experts, saying: 'We're not going to listen to so-called terrorism experts who are linked in any way to the last eight years of disastrous counterterrorism. We're going to take a new approach. We have a new president.'

Gorka denied Islam itself was America's enemy. 'That would be absurd. It is a war inside Islam. And we want to see our friends win that war,' he said.