Reply #53: I'm not sure I could.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

I suspect most of DU's Muslims are much like most of DU's Christians - much nicer and better people than more mainstream practitioners of their respective faiths, but not reliable sources of information on what the official or consensus views are.

While I'm sure that a lot of them are very well-informed, the little knowledge of Islam I have suggests that much of what I've seen Muslims posting on DU about their faith, while not factually inaccurate, is misleading as a guide to what the majority of Muslims believe, and what the "true" teachings of Islam (assuming you accept the notion of there being a platonic form of a religion distinct from what its followers actually do, which I'm inclined not to) are.

The same is true of Christians, to an arguably even greater extent, especially given the relative density of Christian and Muslim posts - if the only Christians I'd encountered had been on DU, I'd regard Christianity as a very good thing indeed.