Mormon Targets

I don't have much truck with the Mormon religion, but crazy as many of its beliefs and traditions are, if yours me, they are no better or worse than those of other religious faiths.

Now if I remember correctly, Mormons believe that their leader, Joseph Smith, was a prophet who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints in upstate New York, in the early 19th century, after discovering set of golden plates which he had been led to by an Angel of God.

Sounds barmy, I know, but no more barmy than Moses parting the Red Sea, or Jesus Christ coming back from the dead on Easter Sunday, or the Prophet Muhammad splitting the moon in two.

Yet for believing that Joseph Smith is another of God's prophets with the latest insight into how God believes we should all live our lives, Mormons must be blasphemers and heretics, at least in the eyes of those who follow a conservative version of Islam.

Like the Glasgow imam, Habid Ur Rehman, who celebrated the murder of a fellow Muslim in Pakistan or the chap from Bradford, Tanveer Ahmed, who travelled all the way to Glasgow to attack and kill the peaceful shopkeeper, Asad Shah.  

Now I agree that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding although if you ask me, Islam has a real problem with the way it is taught in parts of the world - where jihad and martyrdom are glorified, while others are condemned to death for being blasphemers, heretics and apostates.

Even mild-mannered authors like Salman Rushdie.