We’ve typically driven by the Islamic Center of Virginia on our way to church when we’ve been in the Richmond area. (Photo from the Center’s Facebook page)
Yet again this morning I encountered the claim online that Islam isn’t really a religion. It’s actually, so today’s anonymous commenter said, a political ideology that seeks world domination.
This is mere depressing nonsense, of course — although, it seems to me, there is method in the madness (at least in some iterations). The goal for some seems to be to prepare the ground for either stripping Muslims of the First Amendment rights that are constitutionally assigned to the freedom of religion or, even more aggressively, for barring and expelling Muslims from the United States completely.
And it seems to me that Latter-day Saints, of all people, ought to resist such idiocy, not least because precisely the same claim has been asserted about our faith. Not only historically, in the nineteenth century, but now. It took me perhaps ten seconds to locate a current online illustration of the claim. Here’s the example that I found, but further illustrations could be multiplied all day long:
Just so we’re clear: Mormonism is just not religious. It never was.
Mormonism has coasted along for two hundred years on the assumption by society at large that if an institution says it is religious, then it must actually be religious. This is especially true for those ones that ground themselves in the Bible. The assumption is that all those entities have as their fundamental goal bringing people closer to some sort of an encounter with the divine. And the rank and file membership believe that following the Mormon way will indeed expose them to divinity. All those testimonies are really assurances to each other that somewhere, buried deep within Mormonism, one can actually get God to respond to their prayers.
In 2025, the curtain has been pulled aside and we see Mormonism for what it really is. It is an organization designed deliberately to be in charge of everybody else in the world. We all know the history. Their biggest draw is to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus. But in the Mormon theology, the whole reason for Jesus’ return is to install Mormons as the undisputed- and totally secular- rulers of the world. That’s why it is so hard for posters here to stick to religion- because the “religion” itself does not stick to religion. Thank you.
That was posted approximately a year ago. And here are a few of the responses to it:
The unfortunate reality, at least in Mormonism, is that god is money–which provides power and influence. It’s what they worship, it’s what they prioritize, and it’s what they desire above all else. Mormonism is a Fortune500 international masquerading as a religion.
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Nearly identical to the Jewish and Muslim narrative.
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And the Christian one too. It’s all garbage.
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They all trace themselves back to Abraham. And Abraham’s great reward, after demonstrating his fidelity, was pure and simple real estate.
One suspects that the gods of other groups around that region were also really, really into conveyancing.
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Mormonism is just a real estate and stock exchange corporation that sells some “church” on the side. When I learned the legal, official name of the organization is “The Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”, that was all I needed to know.
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Oh honey, that’s what religion has always been.
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And plenty of them are arrogant enough to believe that they should and one day will be in charge of the world
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You know it’s not religious when you listen to 1 sacrament meeting. How many times do they mention God or Jesus? Uh…never. Bible study? Nope. Book of Mormon mainly or only. Commandments posted anywhere? Nope. Beatitudes posted anywhere? Nope. Nowhere. But they will walk up to you and hit you up for tithing and setting you up in the computer to pay that tithing. For this anti-Jesus, no God belief system? Pay you to commit fraud and deception? No thanks.
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Mormonism, so-called is just the tax fraud division of LD$ Inc’s hedge fund. It started as a con. Was usurped by Breed’em Young and has been run as a cult on a paying basis from its inception. Just like most other religions, only newer.
An artist’s conception of a distant and hypothetical thermoplanet (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
My wife and I watched Project Hail Mary last night. We enjoyed it. And, as Rocky and Ryland Grace were dangerously skimming the atmosphere of Tau Ceti e (aka Adrian), the thought crossed my mind that it was entirely appropriate to be seeing that particular scene in the movie on that particular night. It was just three or four hours before that the Orion-class command module Integrity had reentered Earth’s atmosphere and touched down in the Pacific off the California coast, bringing NASA’s Artemis II mission to a successful conclusion.
And, by the way, the Interpreter Foundation didn’t purchase our tickets for us. Nor was any donor duped into paying for them.
Leaving Nauvoo for Carthage, Joseph Smith (portrayed by Paul Wuthrich) looks back one last time toward his wife, Emma, and his family, in a scene from the 2024 Interpreter Foundation film Six Days in August.
In this episode of Conversations with Interpreter, John E. Cochran II and Joseph Cochran explore the societal and cultural changes that seem to have allowed the Lamanites to be receptive to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Cochrans lay out their argument in an article entitled, “From Wilderness to Covenant Threshold: Land, Literacy, and Religious Readiness in the Book of Mormon,” published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. In this episode, they observe that the descriptions of Lamanites in early parts of the Book of Mormon do not always coincide with what the sons of Mosiah find in their missionary journey. They argue that it is the language and culture brought by Amulon and the wicked priests actually helped prepare the Lamanites for the gospel of Jesus Christ, showing how God prepares people in ways that are sometimes different from what we expect. God wants all of his people to return to him and he is constantly finding ways to prepare people, including cultural and societal changes.
In my opinion, after watching his work for years now, Ryan Burge (an ordained Protestant pastor and a Ph.D. sociologist) is one of the most consistently interesting commentators on the American religious scene. I hope that he won’t mind my sharing this meme of his, with full credit. I’m trying to call attention to his work.
As these examples, drawn from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, demonstrate with alarming clarity, religious people continue to try to inflict their poisonous beliefs on the innocent people around them:
And, of course, I also call your attention to the image above, which comes from Dr. Ryan Burge. I think that it probably demonstrates that the “non-religious,” who are at the bottom of the chart, are foundational to the happiness of all Americans, including the parasitical religious people who sit atop them, oppressing them and holding them down. Or something like that.
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