Cowardice of an Anti-Mormon Mormon

“Anti-Mormon” is a funny phrase. In the mid-1800s, when there was a kill order out on Mormons in Missouri, I’m sure it still held some meaning. I was raised in the Mormon church, but I was raised without a clear definition for it. I've always heard its shortened form “anti-” used as a slur for anyone critical of the church, including ex-Mormons, to color them bitter, hateful, misled, under the influence of Satan, and ultimately, wrong. It's synonymous with "evil" with more than a hint of "obnoxious". Most recently, it’s become a source of bored annoyance for Mormons, who sometimes dismiss even their own prophets’ words from their own sources as “anti-Mormon” if used to teach anything not in a heavily-edited Mormon lesson manual.

This use as a slur has completely defanged the word, but the prefix "anti-" still gives victim status to anything following it.  It's like calling the Mormon church "anti-science", which it certainly has been, but this type of wordplay muddies the waters. My entire family is still on the rolls of the church. I'm not anti-myself or anti- my mother, so if you’re a Mormon and you want to throw a label on me to make yourself feel like a martyr, kindly piss up a rope. No one has a fatwa against you that doesn’t have two or three against me.

Which brings me to my next point. No one has to fear being called anti-Mormon. The Book of Mormon Musical, as hilariously “anti-” as it gets, features official LDS church ads in the playbill. Members of the LDS church don’t bomb the meetinghouses of the polygamous FLDS or any other mormon sects. Cracking jokes about the racism and multiple wives of Brigham Young might be boorish, but I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous.

There’s a scarier slur related to more dangerous criticism: Islamophobic. I don’t know what Islamophobic means, because nobody seems to agree on a definition. Breaking the word down to its roots is taking a step backward in an age where even ex-Muslims living with their Muslim family can be sprayed down with the term on the internet.

When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I fought alongside and slept in the same tent as practicing Muslims in the Afghan National Army, at the same time as nearby Mullahs called for our deaths. I let my co-workers assume I was Christian. Even now, when I express my distaste for religion, I avoid calling out Islam specifically. I trusted our Afghan partners, but straining relationships with locals is never wise. It was especially foolhardy in SW Afghanistan at the time. Before I deployed, I bought a Quran with translation; I took it overseas with me, but carefully wrapped it up in a pillowcase and hid it. We were told to, out of respect, never touch a Quran. I still don’t know if my caution was justified.

So am I Islamophobic? That’s, unfortunately, not for me to decide. In this reactionary age when shouting down ideas with words like “ignorant” or “misinformed” has failed to attract enough advertisers or retweets, crying “Islamophobic” sounds both extreme and strangely liberal. It’s as if just the accusation draws enough attention. This might be convenient for now, but think of the consequences.

I self-apply the term “anti-Mormon” to de-fang it further than practicing Mormons already have. I think Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were either liars or delusional, just as racist and sexist as anyone else at the time, and certainly not worth listening to. I think they church they set up is patently false, occasionally abusive, and I discourage anyone from making the same mistake my 8-year-old self did. Those are my beliefs, and it doesn’t make anyone my enemy. It doesn’t make me hateful or scared of anything.

Giving “Islamophobia” the “anti-Mormon” treatment is dangerous in two ways. One, it hurts people to whom the term is misapplied, but it also distracts from actual (even institutionalized) discrimination that Muslims still face in much of the Anglophone world.

Watering these definitions down wasn’t wise, but it’s done. Violent groups, both secular and religious, actually do mean people harm based on how they pray, their heritage, or what they look like. Some blow people up or recruit child soldiers to stand behind, nowadays they even film it with cell phones for an internet audience. The last thing anyone wants to be mixed up in hate motivated by belief, so why are we throwing writers and Youtube commenters into the pile with actual fucking scumbags?

So here it is: I'm anti-Mormon. Here are some other names you can call me, if you get bored of that one: heretic, infidel, gentile, kafir. I'll answer to any of them. Unfortunately, I’m still afraid of being branded Islamophobic, though I’m starting to see that fear as irrational. It’s confusing being an anti-Mormon Mormon and an Islamophobic-phobic at the same time.

Does any of that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me.