Are Mormons like Muslims?
By Davis Bitton

A generation ago, in the middle of the Cold War, I faced the challenge of trying to communicate across differences of language and culture. A faculty member at the University of Texas in Austin, I was teaching a course on the Age of the Reformation.

One day I received a telephone call from someone in the university administration. Some visiting Russian clergymen were on campus and had expressed an interest in attending one of my classes. Would I have any objection? "Of course, they are welcome to attend," I said. "When will it be?" "This morning," was the answer.

About an hour later I showed up in my class of about forty upper-division students. Promptly at the time the class was scheduled to begin, a group of about ten Russians filed into the room and found seats in the back of the room. Wearing long clerical robes and full beards, they were identified as clerics in the Russian Orthodox Church.

I lectured on Martin Luther and managed to include time for questions and student discussion. If it wasn’t my most brilliant performance, it was pretty good, I thought, and I was relieved when the bell rang announcing the end of the hour.

To my surprise, the visiting Russians then came to the front of the room and surrounded me at the lectern. Someone served as translator for the benefit of the others. They were respectful and friendly, not at all threatening.

After a couple of questions about Luther, one of them asked if I were Lutheran or Catholic. "Neither," I said. "I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You may know this group as the Mormons."

The visitors seemed puzzled. They obviously didn’t have the foggiest notion of what I was talking about. After talking between themselves in Russian, one of them turned to me and smilingly said, "Oh, I think we understand. You are like the Baptists."

What would you say? These Russians meant no harm and were doing their best to recognize that Mormons were one of the groups within the confusing (to them) array of Christian denominations. "Well, yes, in a way," was my answer. There was no time for fuller explanation because their guide reminded them that they had another appointment and must be on their way.

Only a few days ago I heard of an experience very similar to this. A group from Saudi Arabia had been visiting different locations in the United States to see how we handled religious education. They were in Utah and were conducted on a tour of Temple Square. Trying to understand who these Mormons are, one of them finally smiled and said, "Oh, now I see. You are like the Catholics." Recognizing that the Saudi visitor intended no disrespect but was trying to say that the Church is one group within Christianity, the guide said, "Yes, in a way."

For those describing Mormonism, the most common and persistent comparison from 1830 to the present has been the comparison to Islam. As observers wrote about the new religion, Joseph Smith was repeatedly said to be like Muhammed.

Some few parallels are indeed obvious. Both men criticized the corruption and inadequacy of the religious world surrounding them. Both were, or claimed to be, prophets. Both brought forth new works of scripture. Both authorized polygamy under certain circumstances. Both had political goals. Both were willing to use military force under certain circumstances. At least these are the comparisons that were put forth.

In 1842, John C. Bennet’s exposés proclaimed Joseph Smith to be a militaristic tyrant with his own seraglio. In 1861, Richard Burton, who knew much more about Islam than the others who wrote on the subject, also saw the parallels. The comparison was apparently hard to resist. In 1906, Jennie Fowler Willing published Mormonism: The Mohammedanism of the West, and in 1912, Bruce Kinney brought out a book entitled Mormonism: The Islam of America.

The message usually intended, as historian Arnold Green has demonstrated, was that both Muhammed and Joseph Smith were false prophets, rejecting true Christianity. Interestingly, for many years Roget’s Thesaurus listed the Koran and the Book of Mormon together under the term "pseudo-revelation." In the guise of a comparison, both leaders could be defamed as sensual and brutal, the two religions as gross and primitive. Thus a comparison that may seem innocuous in fact carried a powerful negative message.

But not everything about Islam was or is negative. As early as 1855, we find Elder George A. Smith delivering an ambitious sermon on the subject. He even included a brief bibliographical discussion, showing intelligent awareness of the strengths and limitations of several works he had read.

Considering how close this was to the beginning of settlement in the Salt Lake valley, I am amazed that Elder Smith had the luxury to think about world religions and comparisons. It was a year of terrible grasshopper infestations. With survival itself a challenge, scholarly study and analysis must have seemed relatively unimportant.

In the same year, Parley P. Pratt said:

Twenty-five years later a different observation was made by Richard W. Young (Brigham Young’s nephew):

For Richard Young, true Christianity meant the restored gospel in its fullness. He was suggesting that in several ways Islam might prepare the soil for the missionary message. He might be less sanguine about present-day militant, expansionist Islam.

In 1882, President John Taylor insisted on a crucial difference between Mormonism and Islam. God has assigned us the responsibility to preach the gospel to all the world, he said:

President Taylor overstated the extent to which Muslims used force to compel conversions, for historically Jews and Christians were usually allowed to continue their worship under certain legal liabilities. But in emphasizing the centrality of human agency, President Taylor recognized a fundamental difference between Mormonism and Islam.

Rejecting any form of fate, or determinism, or predestination, the restored gospel proclaims that nothing is more basic than agency. Incidentally, it was over this same issue regarding human nature that Erasmus of Rotterdam parted company with Martin Luther in the 1520s.

Comparisons appear to be one of the ways humans understand things, but all too often such juxtapositions are misleading. In the nineteenth century, Latter-day Saints were compared not only to Islam but also to blacks, Indians, and Chinese and Irish immigrants. None of these comparisons was intended to be complimentary. In fact, on several occasions we were compared to scum, vermin, and a cancerous growth on the body. For those denouncing the Saints in these intemperate terms, the solution to the so-called Mormon problem was obvious — extermination.

I prefer to think that Latter-day Saints are like the primitive Christians of the apostolic era, but that comparison too has its limits and may or may not communicate anything meaningful to another person.

Comparisons of one group to another can be illuminating if one has the opportunity to set forth both similarities and differences, but too often such a careful analysis is not possible. And there is some presumption of knowledge behind any comparisons. It doesn’t accomplish much to say that X is like Y if the listener or reader is uninformed about Y.

Whenever such comparisons are put forth, a good answer is often, "Well, yes and no." Even without further opportunity to explain, the obvious implication is that further discussion is required on the subject. When my Russian clergymen compared Latter-day Saints to Baptists, they intended no disrespect to either group. Under the circumstances, perhaps it was not a bad response to say simply, "Yes, in a way."