Understanding Islam – Ensign Article

Personally, I really like Islam. If I still had a literal belief in the Abrahamic God, I might’ve become one. I considered it for a long time. They’ve got a lot of similarities with the LDS.

I think it was included, because there’s a lot of Islamophobia in Western countries. But Islam is a VERY big religion, with many different denominations. If you don’t belong to a religion, people tend to clump those belonging to another religion together; there are the “Jews”, the “Buddhists”, the “Athiests”, the “Hindus”… and people who are not Christian will just as much lump Catholics and Mormons together. And then there’s the case on how the FLDS give the “Mormons” a bad name. One bad sect ruins the whole group.

We’ve got a crisis, where many of the “good” Muslims are fleeing from the “bad” Muslims. But refugees are being turned away, because people assume all Muslims are just like the bad. I think the Church is hoping, that by understanding them a bit better, we’ll have more compassion on them.

How do we not have equal representation? ha!

Most hospitals have chapels that are 110% Christian. I used to work at one that had two chapels; one chapel was Christian, and the other was for all the other religions.

It would help if the west didn’t bomb the “good” Muslims out of their homes and stopped arming the bad ones.

Am I missing something?

Do we know why this was included?

It read strangely to me. I mean, it was understandable, but there was something “off” about the article.

Maybe I don’t understand the purpose of it?

It does seem a little strange that the Church would actually publish an article like this. I guess Daniel Peterson isn’t just an apologist for the LDS Church but also an apologist for Islam and religion in general as well. I understand that “Islamic Studies” is his academic specialty but at the same time it is possible to study history, anthropology, etc. without necessarily sympathizing or agreeing with the beliefs and values other cultures have had so far.

To me it sounds like the general idea behind this article is more or less a way for TBMs to try to tell themselves that they are not completely alone in the world and not really all that weird in terms of having such zealous faith in God and revelation, practicing strict rules and routines in the name of religion, expecting women to dress “modestly” and know their place, and so on and so forth in the face of increasing secularism and liberalism nowadays. Why not also publish similar articles such as, “understanding Scientology” and “understanding the Jehovah’s Witnesses”? I guess these other sects just don’t have quite the same clout on the world scene because they don’t have almost two billion followers and over a thousand years of history behind them.

For me, paying attention to some of the similarities between Islam and the LDS Church didn’t help reinforce my belief in LDS doctrines at all, in fact this was actually one of the first major cracks in my shelf because I started to think, “Why should I believe Joseph Smith’s story any more than Mohammad’s story?” And I had to admit that I was LDS mostly because I happened to be born in Utah with LDS parents and surrounded by other Mormons so it was relatively easy for me to just go along with everyone else but if I had been born in one of these predominantly Muslim countries the odds are that I would have been Muslim instead for more or less the same reasons that I ended up LDS. After that the idea of thinking we are so special and better than others for being LDS started to seem harder and harder to take seriously any more. It reminds me of the following quote.

“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”