For me, one of the most important principles in writing about the religious beliefs of others is this one: Those about whose religious beliefs one is writing should be able to recognize their religious beliefs in what has been written.
They may say that the author has expressed one or more elements of their belief in a somewhat unaccustomed way. That happens sometimes. But they should be able to recognize it as their own. One of the best compliments that I’ve occasionally received from Muslims about my writings on Islam is that I’ve gotten it “right.”
I would be quite unhappy if they were to have said the opposite. If the person whose religious faith has been “explained” is protesting “No! no! no! That’s not right! It’s not accurate! We don’t believe that!” then the wannabe explainer hasn’t done it right.
I can’t count the number of conversations about my own religious beliefs that I’ve had with others, especially with often quite exercised evangelical Protestants, in which they’ve said to me “You believe x!” and I’ve responded not only that, no, I don’t believe x but that, in fact, I’m unaware of anybody in my church who believes x. To which the challenger then responds “But that’s what your church teaches!” To which I’ve replied that, in all of my (now) many decades as a member and a missionary and a teacher and a writer and a sometime leader for my church, and as a long-time resident of Utah and a long-time professor of my church’s flagship university, I’ve never taught or been taught x as Church doctrine.” “Well, that’s still what your church believes!” answers the challenger. And, sometimes, if the challenger is especially well-equipped, he or (very occasionally) she will present me with a decontextualized supporting quotation from Journal of Discourses 14:234 or from an obscure 1950s book by a long forgotten member of the First Council of Seventy or a onetime Institute teacher that seems to endorse x. Seldom if ever, by the way, a passage that the challenger discovered on his or her own via serious research. Instead, it’s typically one that he or she came across while skimming through an anti-Mormon website.
Such conversations are tiresome and, in my opinion, quite without value. And I’m not much more enthusiastic about such conversations when they concern Islam, rather than my own faith.
Right now, one such conversation is going on elsewhere on the internet about whether Muslims worship Muhammad. To which the answer is, simply, that they don’t. Period. And I strongly suspect that, if the person asserting that they do were to line up, say, a thousand practicing Muslims of reasonable intelligence and to ask them “Do you worship Muhammad?” he would receive one thousand resolute negatives. Some of them perhaps a bit on the passionate side.
Do Muslims venerate Muhammad? Yes. Absolutely. Do they call down blessings upon him and upon his family and upon his “companions”? Yes, they commonly do. But there is a strong, bright line between that and actually worshiping him. To associate or join anything else with God in worship is considered shirk (شِرْك) — pronounced sheerk: literally, “association,” but, more broadly, “polytheism” — and shirk is the worst sin, indeed the unforgivable sin, in the lexicon of Islam.
One area I think I disagree with Dan on is about the criticism of Mormonism by ex-Mormons. For example, talk of “Smithmas” here.
Rather than a bunch of evangelicals claiming Mormons worship Joseph Smith, it’s a bunch of former Mormons who themselves spent years singing “Praise to the Man.” I think it’s easy to dismiss ex-Mormon critics, but the truth is that almost everyone here was at one time as faithful and believing as DCP himself. I think that gives them a little more credibility.
I made up the part about Johnny interrupting the prayers. I was exploring the credibility of somebody believing that they have a serious interest in "facts and truth" and then criticizing the manner of prayer of people of cultures they know nothing about aside from what their pastor told them.)