Hitchens once said something along the lines of that if you want to understand the real history of the religions from the past, you need not look much further from the ones of the recent past.
To me it seems that the history of Mormonism has amazing parallels with the history of Islam. I've long maintained that the 'prophets' had personality disorders (they were not liars or delusional...but both, as in someone with a personality disorder who makes things up and also believes in the stuff he made up).
I thought more about it after hearing so many arguments like "Hay, if Muhammed wasnt a prophet do you think so many people would follow him. I mean, how could a crazy person have built and Empire". I'd usually just say, ask Hitler or the million other Empires run by crazy people though history (I mean, c'mon...the ancient Egyptians were pretty squared away and they beleived all kind of crazy things), or something like that, but thinking more on it Mormonism offers a perfect window into this.
Islam today is much bigger (apx 1.2 billion vs apx 13 million), but also consider Mormonism is less than 200 years old. Not only that, but did not have the advantage of being born in a time of massive relative ignorance and illiteracy..instead coming on the scene in the post enlightenment west fairly recently. It barely had time to get its motor running before Darwin came around. Imagine what Joe Smith could have done if he was in 7th century Arabia instead.
So, I thought I'd throw that out there.
Invite you to really get a look at the histoy of Mormonism, as a way maybe of gaining greater understanding of the history of islam, by comparing and contrasting.
http://historyofmormonism.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonismhttp://carm.org/mormonismhttp://www.inplainsite.org/html/smith_and_muhammed.html (this one lays out it out in a simple manner, however be warned...this one is a christian apologist, only included because it highlights certain things I thought significant)
and even interesting articles by Mormons on Islam, which you may find both surprising and familiar (they are people of the book too
):
http://www.mormonchurch.com/37/what-do-mormons-think-of-muhammad 
Topic: Of Muslims and Mormons