Wow. You’ve been a member for ten days and already you are qualified to assess people you have never met.
Truly, a learned individual. I apprentice myself to you in hope that you will lead me to a greater light. Specifically, the light out your ass, which is where your words have been coming from.
You might find in the future that others are less appreciative of recto-cranial inversion than you might imagine. Just a thought.
Well, according to today’s paper, Rev. Vines isn’t going to meet with anyone about his remarks. This is despite his official statement that he would be willing to meet with Islamic scholars who could explain thier texts to him. Isn’t it a bad thing to “bear false witness” or “lie”? I seem to remember some rules about that. Now the paper is getting and printing “support Vines” letters. They also have a message board for comments. I haven’t read the more than 450 posts, but a sampling is predictable: ‘red-neck idiot’ vs. ‘messenger of God.’
And I ask again, anyone know anything about one of Vines’ source books Unveiling Islam? I heard it was written by Christian converts from Islam, so is it a predictable slam on “my former mistaken beliefs” or a reasoned look at it?
posted without Preview due to glacial response time
sigh
You know, if they put this much energy into going after $cientologists, we’d have those greedy bastards licked.
I think so, too, PlanMan. But look what happened when I pointed that out.
Is this where I get to jump in and shriek, “Hate speech! Hate speech!” 
One of the more disturbing lines in the article:
Maybe I am confused and please correct me if I misunderstand the basics here.
First, the Jews worshipped one God. They have their covenant with him. Christians worship the same exact God but have a newer covenant with more favorable terms through the intercessions of Jesus which Christians accept as the Messiah and bringer of that new covenant. Muslims (before they were Muslims) did not worship this God. Muslims now consider they are worshipping the exact same entity (called Allah in their language) being enlightened by a prophet sent by that same God named Muhammad. His job was to bring the previously ignorant people into the same fold with rules that (for their covenant if you will) were appropriate for their previous culture.
So, my understanding is that for each religion, each is worshipping not only an equivalent God, but the exact same entity. The only difference being by which covenant as delivered by the messenger choosen by God to deliver his word to that group of people.
To me, any strife between any of these groups seem completely misplaced. But hey, what do I know?
One of the more disturbing lines in the article:
Maybe I am confused and please correct me if I misunderstand the basics here.
First, the Jews worshipped one God. They have their covenant with him. Christians worship the same exact God but have a newer covenant with more favorable terms through the intercessions of Jesus which Christians accept as the Messiah and bringer of that new covenant. Muslims (before they were Muslims) did not worship this God. Muslims now consider they are worshipping the exact same entity (called Allah in their language) being enlightened by a prophet sent by that same God named Muhammad. His job was to bring the previously ignorant people into the same fold with rules that (for their covenant if you will) were appropriate for their previous culture.
So, my understanding is that for each religion, each is worshipping not only an equivalent God, but the exact same entity. The only difference being by which covenant as delivered by the messenger choosen by God to deliver his word to that group of people.
To me, any strife between any of these groups seem completely misplaced. But hey, what do I know?
Damn, I previewed to make sure it wasn’t a double post, and I still got one. Sorry!
Also, on review, it could be unclear, but I was saying that the prophet’s name was Muhammad, not their God’s. Carry on.
Sigh. I remember back in 1997 (I think), when the Bishop of Jarrow said that he’d be spending Lent reading the Koran and trying to understand Islam. It got out to the local press, and they jumped all over him for “abandoning traditional values” or some such rubbish.
There are people out there who are determined to hate. Fortunately, there are also people who are determined to understand… among Christians, Moslems, and even, I suppose, the Southern Baptist Convention. (Didn’t we have a sane and sensible SBC poster around here somewhere? What happened to him?)
I’ll just hope that, when the haters have finished each other off, they leave a few of the understanders still standing amid the rubble…
scotth, that is precisely what most intelligent people understand to have happened. However, as with Biblical interpretation, the proper stance for the Religious Right seems to be to take a few comments out of context, redefine terms (e.g., since Christians conceive of God as a Trinity, therefore Jews are not really worshipping the God of the Bible – who is a Trinity – something that I’m sure would surprise Chaim Keller and Zev Steinhart!), and otherwise twist things to validate their own claim to exclusive knowledge of the Truth.
Welcome to Bizarro Religion World! 
Update: Bob Campbell, president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, just put out this op/ed piece over my company’s newswire, which is where I saw it. Kudos to him for having some guts.
Hey! Prez. Bush came out today against Rev. Vines’ comments! One point for dubya!