Smith and Mohammed. I would now like to compare Smith and Mohammed in a rather free style, and I want to start by considering Smith gratis as a fraud, a genius huckster. I do this as a hypothesis. We know that one of the two stories, Smith's or Mohammed's, is most certainly false for the one is polytheistic and the other monotheistic. And then when you hear the Muslim story and then next the Mormon story you almost have to stifle a gasp for they are so similar, and yet one is most certainly false, and yet, due to the similarity, you cannot tell which one is the false story. It's like learning Ptolemy's explanation of the solar system and then hearing Tycho Brahe's explanation. You know that one (at least) is false, but you can't tell which one.
Joseph Smith, given this hypothesis of fraud, is without question a rare genius, not unlike Shakespeare or Milton or Tolkien, except that Smith's genius was displayed, like Mozart’s, at an early age and by the time he was 20 or so he had produced a work equal in scope to something of Tolkien (Book of Mormon). He is also another Barnum and he has this idea that Mohammed was a fake and that Mohammed's fraud could be done again and even better. In his compositional genius he writes this Book of Mormon and as a pre-Barnum he is going to pull off the grand slam, and to do good in that, speculating now to his motives, in order to put the human race off onto a track toward peace. Who knows? possibly. Another "Noble Liar" a la Plato?
Smith convinces people that he has been given this communication and has spoken man to super man with God himself and God wants them to join. They can tell by the warm feeling that develops in their breast as they hear the great salvation story that they are themselves of the chosen (the lost tribes being reconstituted). He then takes five of his followers and informs them of a special communication. God wants to use them for his purposes. They are to be shown the golden pages of the divine book and they are then to swear upon hell fire that they are convinced that these are the golden pages which are sent down from heaven (or wherever he decided that they were to come from), and that God will bless these five with the greatest gift, guaranteed godhood. Each will be given their own planet to have fun in forever and do anything they want to do. (not unlike the Mohammedan paradise, except better, for now you get more than 70 virgins--you get anything you want.)
And so these faithful five spy the (apparent) pages from some distance and are not allowed to touch their holy surfaces, and they swear that Joseph Smith did indeed have the golden plates and so he is beyond question the Prophet. And so then the movement gets going.
When we compare this story with that of Mohammed, we find the Smithian story rather more compelling than Mohammed’s story. Mohammed, if he were another Tolkien, had many many years to conceive of his utopia and how it fit in with the talk of the past and also how to present it through this angel he could have dreamed up called Gabriel (Smith had Moroni). Mohammed is illiterate and so he needs to enter the mediation of the angel Gabriel. Gabriel reads the book before the throne of God and memorizes it. He then comes to Mohammed and recites it and Mohammed recites it back and then goes down to scribes and recites it a second time and they write it down and then recite it back to him for correction and then they stuff their writings into a jar and guard it for future compilation. Smith, being literate, is able to dispense with so much of this complexity, made necessary by the illiteracy of Mohammed. The book can be brought to him, the very book itself and he can read it for himself. It is written in a divine script, of course, and not something earthly like Arabic, and he is given the means of seeing the writing in his own text (not unlike the speaking in tongues in early Acts, where each hears his own language in the speech of the disciples). And so he can read it himself and he can copy it down himself, and so he has no need of Gabriel and no need of scribes and so avoids all the problems inherent in those needs.
Furthermore while Mohammed is the only one to see Gabriel, and Smith the only one to see Moroni, at least Smith has the enormous comparative advantage of possessing the Book of God itself, the actual book, and can get people to testify to that, on the pain of eternal damnation for a lie. And then when the book disappears (just like Gabriel disappears after Mohammed) there is the great evidence of the sworn statements of five honest and god fearing witnesses of the Great Book. What a magic that must have seemed! No wonder so many more people began to follow Smith than Mohammed, who had to go to a neighboring town and start over again before he got it right, and took several years in the process.
Finally Smith was able to draw on the new knowledge of the heavenly systems and tie in the planets with Mohammed’s paradise, except that these exist even now while the Muslim, other than the martyr, has to sleep before reaching. This is exceptionally appealing. And given that Smith could take much more of the Jewish and Christian bibles than dared Mohammed (who had to deny enormous portions) and given that he was able to keep the old Jewish stuff of a chosen people and show that Paul was in search of the Jewish tribes lost among the gentiles, Smith did a great job of integration, which is an enormous improvement over Mohammed.
Where the Muslims may get the upper hand is in the exposition of all the numerology of the Koran, for this is amazing to most people who hear of it. In fact it is because of this numerology that I personally subscribe to the view that Mohammed was indeed an honest man and further that did not hallucinate but did indeed have some contact with a supernatural being in the cave.
Taking a final look at Smith then we see that he has a better story than Mohammed although the form and essence of the communication is almost identical with Mohammed's recitation, namely externally given rules and regulations needed in order to get the planet (as Mohammed did for the paradise) and requiring expertise, no certain moral core and even reason to think that the moral soul must be surrendered for the reward, and an exclusion of homosexuals and a diminishment of women.