Joseph Smith vs Muhammad

[_Fence Sitter]

Do Muslims regard Muhammad the same way the LDS view Joseph Smith?
Obviously both religions refer to each as a prophet. In another thread someone (cough DCP cough) mentioned that the LDS do not worship Joseph Smith. From my uninformed viewpoint it looks like the Muslim world does worship Muhammad.

[_The Nehor]

Do Muslims regard Muhammad the same way the LDS view Joseph Smith?

If you mean exactly 'the same way', then no. Are there some similarities between the way they admire them? Yes.

Obviously both religions refer to each as a prophet. In another thread someone (cough DCP cough) mentioned that the LDS do not worship Joseph Smith.

This has been true from the beginning. Any LDS would tell you the same thing.

From my uninformed viewpoint it looks like the Muslim world does worship Muhammad.[/quote]

Some muslims describe Muhammed as 'perfect' and LDS do not think the same of Joseph Smith.

The meaning of what that 'perfection' of Muhammed is can get murky. You'd have to read more then I can put on this board to get a handle on it.

[_Lucinda]

In another thread someone (cough DCP cough) mentioned that the LDS do not worship Joseph Smith.

Really?!? I'm going to look for that thread. I think DCP (not sure who he is) is waaaaay off the mark on that one. The hymn "Praise to the Man", the ginormous statue of Joseph Smith at the big, beautiful aptly named "Joseph Smith Memorial building." The way some TBMs in my family almost got teary eyed when I brought up a few concerns I had with Joseph Smith's character. I beg to differ. Whether they like it or not, TBMs have raised Joseph Smith to a level where it's not healthy admiration--it is worship.

[_Fence Sitter]

In another thread someone (cough DCP cough) mentioned that the LDS do not worship Joseph Smith.

Really?!? I'm going to look for that thread. I think DCP (not sure who he is) is waaaaay off the mark on that one. The hymn "Praise to the Man", the ginormous statue of Joseph Smith at the big, beautiful aptly named "Joseph Smith Memorial building." The way some TBMs in my family almost got teary eyed when I brought up a few concerns I had with Joseph Smith's character. I beg to differ. Whether they like it or not, TBMs have raised Joseph Smith to a level where it's not healthy admiration--it is worship.

I am not sure if the attention we pay to Joseph Smith raises to the level of worship but obviously we view him in a different light than any other man, at least any other man in recent history. I think we would consider him in the same light as many of the Biblical prophets, perhaps more so because he directly relates to our dispensation. That said I do not believe that attention raises to the level, my uniformed view holds, of that which the Muslim religion pays Muhammad.

Here is his Dr. Daniel Peterson's quote http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16157&start=21

Dr. Peterson I hope you will offer your views on how the Muslims view Muhammad if just briefly.

[_Daniel Peterson]

There is no single Islamic attitude toward the Prophet, beyond veneration. On this, the standard discussion is

Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

I would say that, in certain forms of Islam (e.g., in certain strains of Sufi mysticism), he comes close to taking a quasi-divine status. But so do humans in general, in another sense, and there is always a firm ontological distinction between the human and the divine, even in the case of Muhammad. He is a creature, never the creator. A lengthy statement of extreme veneration for Muhammad is

Hajjah Amina Adil, Muhammad, The Messenger of Islam: His Life and Prophecy (Washington DC: Islamic Supreme Council of America, 2002).

I deal with a small slice of this rather extreme material in my short article “A Prophet Emerging: Fetal Narratives in Islamic Literature,” in Vanessa R. Sasson and Jane Marie Law, eds., Imagining the Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion, and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 203-222.

The other extreme from Sufi hyperveneration of the Prophet Muhammad can be found in the Wahhabi sect of Islam, centered in Saudi Arabia, which objects to any and all forms of saint-veneration and refuses to allow even for the marking of graves, lest they become the focus of pilgrimage and devotion. Wahhabism typically objects to celebrating the mawlid al-nabi, the Prophet's birthday, which is a big deal in other parts of the Islamic world.

Do Muslims worship Muhammad? I would say No. Not even the extremist Sufis do. And Latter-day Saints certainly don't worship Joseph Smith.

But it depends upon the meaning one assigns to the word worship. Most people today restrict it, I think, to an attitude focused on God. In that sense, neither Mormons nor Muslims worship their founding prophets, and they would consider it heretical blasphemy if somebody did. But the Oxford English Dictionary (or OED) does allow it the broader meaning of "honoring" something or "treating" something "with deep respect," and, in that much looser and less common (and perhaps now obsolete) sense, Mormons and (to a distinctly greater degree) Muslims do "worship" their founding prophets . . . and patriotic Americans "worship" their flag and devout Catholics "worship" the consecrated host. (The OED supplies several specimens of the "worship" of human persons in older English. Thus, for example: "Worship your better, & love your neyghbour" [1489], "I have ever worshypped hym for his great vertues" [1530], and "I will honour those alwayes that be honest, and worship them, whom I shall know to be worthy in their liuvinge" [1579].)

[_Fence Sitter]

Thank you Dr Peterson.

There seems to be a lot controversy regarding pictures of Muhammad. I think you describe this as objections "to any and all forms of saint-veneration" . Do those in the Muslim world extend these objections to other figures beyond Muhammad? Or are depictions of Muhammad the only ones deemed worthy of reprisal? It seems like the only time we hear about this issue is in relation to pictures of the Prophet.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Wahhabi Islam objects to any image of the Prophet. You may be aware of a movie from perhaps thirty or forty years ago entitled The Message, focused on the life of Muhammad. (Anthony Quinn played the Prophet's warrior-uncle Hamzah.) In it, the Prophet is never shown. Rather, the camera is the Prophet, and everything is seen through his eyes. This was a concession to the Wahhabis and their fellow-travelers. (In my opinion, it greatly weakened the film as a work of drama. It's still worth seeing though, even if it tends to portray Muhammad as a kind of seventh-century flower child.)

On the other hand, the Prophet is commonly depicted in Persian and Turkish miniature paintings from the medieval and early modern periods. Sometimes, out of deference to Wahhabi-like sensibilities, his face is left blank or his head is replaced by a stylized flame resting upon his shoulders. But often it's not.

So the idea that there is a universal Islamic ban on images of the Prophet is simply not true. But the Wahhabis would object similarly to representations of Moses, ‘Ali, Jesus, and etc.

Now that I think of it, I once spent several hours in a vast and rather weird art gallery in Tehran that was dedicated to images of the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was chock full of sentimental depictions of the late Ayatollah in heaven, etc. My favorite showed him tip-toeing through an Alpine meadow somewhere; tulips sprang up in his footsteps as he passed. I recall numerous images of Shi‘i Muslim saints, and perhaps even of the Prophet himself.

[_Fence Sitter]

Okay way off topic here but hey it's my thread.

If there are images throghout the world of the prophet, then why are people being threatened with violence (like the Danish Cartoons) for pictures of him?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Wahhabis are every bit as hostile to Shi‘is and other fellow Muslims who don't toe their line as they are toward non-Muslims. (That's a principal reason for the Sunni-Shi‘i strife in Iraq.) All are infidels in their eyes.

But there is no question that they are at war right now with the West.

In my opinion, the Danish cartoon controversy was ginned up by a handful of radical imams living in Denmark and adjacent European countries who were eager to promote strife and violence in order to further their own agendas.

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