Quoting Joseph Smith on “the Al-Koran or the sword”

[ by Charles Cameron — Christopher Hitchens, Muhammad, Jack Chick, and Joseph Smith ]

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I get so tired of people not doing their homework, left and right.

Or perhaps that should read, Left and Right.

1.

I don’t know quite how you’d classify Christopher Hitchens, but in a Slate article today titled Romney’s Mormon Problem: Mitt Romney and the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormonism, he asserts:

On his later forays into the chartless wilderness, there to play the role of Moses to his followers (who were permitted and even encouraged in plural marriage, so as to go forth and mass-produce little Mormons), Smith also announced that he wanted to be known as the Prophet Muhammad of North America, with the fearsome slogan: “Either al-Koran or the Sword.”

Juicy, eh?

Luckily, Hitchens has linked the phrase “Either al-Koran or the Sword” – so we can source the quote in, let’s see, Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great, as excerpted in Slate again:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-hereafter known as the Mormons-was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that “I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad” and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, “Either the Al-Koran or the sword.”

Sadly, there’s no link this time, no further sourcing of the quote.

2.

Hugh Nibley is my go-to man for Mormon scholarship (orthodox), and it doesn’t surprise me that there’s an essay of his on the web comparing Islam and Mormonism [.pdf].

Nibley accepts that “in fact, early Mormon leaders saw no reason why Mohammed should not be considered a true prophet, for there have been many prophets, great and small, in the past whose words are not in the Bible.” But that impression didn’t long survive a second observation:

[T]he striking resemblance turns almost at once into an equally striking contrast when the Moslems announce that Mohammed is the last of the prophets and that there can be no prophet after him. “When a doctrine is sealed,” writes an eminent Moslem scholar, “it is complete, and there can be no further addition. The holy Prophet Mohammed closed the long line of Apostles. … there has been and will be no prophet after Mohammed.”

Nibley’s six-page essay has no quotation in which Joseph Smith speaks of “Al-Koran or the sword”.

Neither, in fact, does Todd Harris in his 162-page 2007 BYU Master’s thesis A Comparison of Muhammad and Joseph Smith in the Prophetic Pattern [.pdf].

3.

Jack Chick to the rescue.

As you may know, Jack Chick publishes some appallingly poorly illustrated Christian booklets that are almost as small as large postage stamps, and almost as much fun to collect.

Chick’s larger-than-usual publication The Enchanter, whose cover graces the top of this post, includes the following garishly interesting graphic:

But – poor taste in art aside – Chick is more thoroughgoing than Hitchens, and is kind enough to supply us with references for the statements he makes. In a commentary on his own pamphlet, he writes:

On October 14, 1838, Joseph Smith called himself a “second Muhammad” as he was concluding a speech in the public square at Far West, Missouri. Those words have been verified by affidavits from Thomas B. Marsh, Orson Hyde (from Joseph’s Quorum of the Twelve), George M. Hinkle, John Corrill, W.W. Phelps (a major leader in the Mormon church), Samson Avard (founder of the Danites), and Reed Peck.

To Marsh’s statement, he footnotes thus:

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