One of the common divine revelations shared by both the Muslim and Mormon Prophets was the concept of polygamy. Yet while to most Mormons today polygamy is like a leprous skeleton they'd rather keep in the closet, Muslims still practice polygamy while Mormons have temporarily suspended the practice. Yet Mormon prophets repeatedly insisted that polygamy was an everlasting, divine commandment that was essential to Mormon males fulfilling their full divine potential. So while Muslims are strict monotheists, Mormon males hoped to procreate innumerable divine-human hybrids to populate the stellar universe. In effect, they were all little gods in the making who hoped to imitate the ascent of God via the pleasures of celestial marriages.
Yes, their prophet told them that God was once as they are now and that they could become as God is now--through the "recovery" of polygamous, celestial marriages that Prophet Joseph Smith had rediscovered. Now this clashes with the orthodox Christian teaching that there are only 3 Gods, or, more conventionally put, a 3 in 1 Triune God. Nevertheless, Mormons are extremely anxious to be classified as Christians-- as you will easily find on their websites. Everything is tailored, one might better say camouflaged, to mimic orthodox, traditional Christian concepts.
Take for instance the concept of prophet. They emphasize certain Christian Bible passages to create the impression that their prophet is essentially the same as all the biblical prophets; they downplay the idea that these prophets can create new, un-orthodox theology at will; they forget to mention that these prophets did so with the concept of polygamy. They cannot avoid mentioning the fact that the book of Mormon is considered to be equally the "WORD of God," thus making non-sense of the concept of Sola Scriptura, but they don't display the fact that their prophet re-wrote the Bible at will to create his own correct "translation" of the Bible.
They don't let you know the amazing fact that their prophet proclaimed: "I am going to tell you how God came to be God." Or that he went on to that just as God is a "self-existent being," "Man does exist upon the same principles." "The first principles of man are self-existent with God." Their prophet acknowledged that orthodox Christians would account such ideas as "blasphemy." "But," he insisted, "I am learned, and know more than all the world put together." Thus, his successor prophet could say with equal divine authority:
“Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it.”
President/Prophet/Seer, John Taylor
One of Mormon's more notorious prophets, Pratt, even speculated that Jesus' relationship with Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene may have been polygamous. He used the Muslim practice of polygamy as the basis for his over generous estimation that four-fifths of the world believed in a plurality of wives. Now with the equivalence that many make between Muslims and terrorism, compounded with the right-wing assertion that President Obama is somehow a Muslim secret agent, Mormons would like to minimize their similarities with the Muslim religion. Many politically partisan, right-wing, Christian evangelicals who hint that President Obama is not a "real" Christian or "real" American, especially of the Birther persuasion, could, with greater validity, emphasize the parallels between the Muslim theology regarding women and the Mormon theology regarding women.
The United States is engaged in a nation-building effort in Afghanistan which has as one of its components an effort to change the Muslim treatment of women. A lot of male Muslims feel it is an essential part of their religion to keep their women veiled or completely shuttered behind burkas. Terrorist Muslims that feel this way have bombed girl's schools because they feel more sexually secure if their women remain uneducated, remaining behind the closed doors of their kitchens and bedrooms. In other words, both Muslim and Mormon polygamy goes back to deep-seated religious concepts about the proper role of women. When the U.S. government confiscated Mormon property and withheld statehood until the Mormon prophets received revelations in 1890 and 1904 to suspend the practice of polygamy, this modified the retrograde Mormon practices regarding women. However, it did not change their underlying religious psychology regarding women. Mormons practiced polygamy because God said so. Only men can be have priestly authority in the LDS Mormon church, (as opposed to different practices in the Reformed Mormons), because--God said so:
Gordon B. Hinckley, prior President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said:
“Women do not hold the priesthood because the Lord has put it that way."
Interestingly, that could change with a new revelation. The God who revealed the TRUTH about a segregated white priesthood only was a racist God up until 1978 when he became a non-discriminatory, equal-opportunity God who gave a "Thus saith the Lord" to the 1978 Mormon Prophet-President permitting blacks into the priesthood--if one literally believes that God operates like that. Therefore, perhaps the current or future Mormon Prophet-President will get a revelation permitting Women to hold the priesthood in the LDS Mormon Church. Stranger things have happened.
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