Straw man fallacies abound in the public perception of everything from rationalism to feminism to Christianity. In the case of something like Christianity, these well-meaning or intentional distortions of Biblical theology are regularly rooted in the fact that many people look to cultural ideas about the Bible rather than the Bible itself when they try to figure out what Christianity entails. The same is true of Judaism or Islam. Whether curious or hostile, a random person is likely to look at commentaries, sermons, or books about the Bible in order to find out what the Bible says instead of just cutting out epistemological unnecessary and usually misleading statements by non-rationalistic authors (though even rationalists do not need to be consulted in order to see what a book states or what logically follows from the ideas in it).
Christian or Islamic commentators do not ultimately determine what is or is not the content of Christianity or Christianity; the Bible and the Quran determine that. Writings and traditions that are not part of these core texts have become so prevalent that they are often mistaken for the religions themselves, when very few inside or outside of these religions actually read the Quran or Bible without making assumptions about its teachings based on cultural representation or supposed consensus. Hearsay can never be known to accurately represent the nature of an idea, and the words of people who talk about a religion without accurately citing its ideas and its central text are useless no matter if the religion is true.
A religion, like any other ideology, can be very different than what it is considered to be even by its supposed followers--and even by the self-professed subscribers of deep sincerity. In order to know if Christianity or Islam entail the ideas that are associated with them, one must actually read the core texts (the Bible and Quran), make no assumptions, and rationalistically analyze what does and does not follow from the statements therein. There is no shortcut to understanding a book by just talking to people who claim to have read it. One must actually do the reading and simultaneously engage in reflection. Otherwise, a person has only reacted to something removed from the foundation of a religion.
Now, a book like the Quran can be demonstrated to be false at the heart of its claims because it teaches that the Torah is valid while contradicting the Torah [1]. This, however, has nothing to do with the often rabid stereotypes of Muslims or what Muslims themselves might say about the Quran, much less whatever ideological opponents who might misrepresent the book say. It has everything to do with the concepts of Islam as described in the Quran. If someone does not reject the Quran based on what its actual contents are and the relationship of those contents with the laws of logic and broad epistemology and metaphysics, they have only rejected it or accepted it out of some bias or assumption. In other words, they do not understand what Islam truly is or how to directly demonstrate what it is.
The way many people come to believe certain things about what claims are featured in Islam is often the same way many people come to believe certain claims are a part of Christianity: they just listen to several random, vague comments about it from people who almost never cite the actual text the religion is based upon and who have perhaps never so much as had a single epistemological thought in their life that did not pale in comparison to the most basic aspects of rationalistic contemplation. If there are any references to the Quran or Bible involved, they are selective, unhelpful, incomplete, or held up without any attempt to explore their connection to other verses or philosophical concepts that do not depend on religious doctrine. Honesty about a religion's true tenets is rarely found in such representations, yet even accurate claims about what ideas are a part of the religion would not be known to be accurate just because someone else claimed so.
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