Author: AP
Publication: CNN News
Date: June 12, 2002
The new head of the Southern Baptist
Convention has rejected calls to repudiate what a Muslim group is calling
"bigoted" and "hate-filled" statements made by one of its pastors.
The Rev. Jack Graham, elected the
convention's president on Tuesday, said the Rev. Jerry Vines' comments
about Islam were "accurate."
Vines, a former convention president,
told conventioners at a pastors' conference Monday that many of this country's
problems can be blamed on religious pluralism.
Pluralists "would have us to believe
that Islam is just as good as Christianity, but I'm here to tell you, ladies
and gentlemen, that Islam is not just as good as Christianity," Vines,
pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, told several thousand
delegates at the gathering in St. Louis.
"Islam was founded by Muhammad,
a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives -- and his last one was a
9-year-old girl. And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah either. Jehovah's
not going to turn you into a terrorist that'll try to bomb people and take
the lives of thousands and thousands of people."
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for
the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the comments
were outrageous.
"It's really unfortunate that a
top leader in a mainstream Christian church ... would use such hate-filled
and bigoted language in describing the faith of one-fifth of the world's
population," Hooper said Tuesday. "This is the level of bigotry that requires
a clear statement from the top leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention."
Graham, of Plano, Texas, said Vines'
statement "is an accurate statement" and that he would not condemn his
colleague.
"I will not respond to Dr. Vines'
statement, other than to say that anyone who follows any path who wants
to go to heaven should look carefully at who they're following and what
they believe," he told reporters.
William Merrell, a spokesman for
the SBC executive committee, said the comments were made outside the actual
meeting, and that it was not the SBC's place to comment.
Ingrid Mattson, vice president of
the Islamic Society of North America and a professor of Islamic studies
at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, called the comments "medieval." She
said statements like this from such high-placed religious leaders can lead
to violence against Muslims.
"It makes me wonder what's the hateful
religion right now that we should be worried about," she said.