Mainstream Islam sees all religions from the template of Islam, which I call the black and white template ( hell and heaven, Jinns and Angels, material reward and punishment, believer and non believer, Islam or nothing) in reality all if this jargon doesn't apply to other religions the same way it does for Islam, I think this is the hardest thing for Muslims and Christians to understand ( especially about eastern religions). I realized this dilemma when I went to university and started taking religious studies courses ( eventually majoring in philosophy and minoring in religious studies). I'll give you my story: I was born Sikh and at the age of 18 I converted to Islam, being as young as I was, I was very naive, I remember it was Ramadan and I was fasting( not yet declaring Shahada at this point) and I made a giant leap to decide to goto the mosque. I respected Islam at this point and probably believed in it too, as I understood the Quran to be a reconciliation of Christianity Judaism and Islam(I. E all three were correct and a believer could choose to follow whichever he wished and gain paradise ( boy was I wrong lol)). As I stepped in the mosque I had no idea what to really think since growing up as a Sikh conditioned me to have a sort of biased against Islam ( due to difficult relationships between Sikhism struggle as a religion with a group of "muslim" emperors in history). When I walked in many people said Salaam to me and greeted me and smiled at me and I had a very good experience( since I am Punjabi most of them just assumed I was muslim). I had a rakhri( a traditional string on ur hand in Sikhism tied on by ur sister on a specific day of the year)on my hand and someone told me it was "haraam", I never understood why and what haraam really meant so I ignored it( my first encounter with the black and white template). I donated a significant amount of money to the mosque in cash and was putting it in the sadaqa box while someone saw me and stopped me and told me that this was to much for a sadaqa box. From then on he questioned who I was and what I was doing in a mosque I explained to him that I was a Sikh that had much respect for Islam, the Quran and Mohammad, he told me I was already a muslim and all I needed to do was say the Shahada, I did this and as I walked out of the mosque I had the most horrible feeling in my gut, like I betrayed my entire family ( my dad died when I was 10 and in Sikhism the son carries on his father legacy as in many middle eastern cultures) from this point I walked home from the mosque asking myself, wat did I just do? This is wrong. That was the first time I realized what cultural conditioning was, I knocked myself back into focus and told myself, hey snap out of it, just because someone gave you your identity from when you were born doesn't mean it's right. From that point on I went to the mosque and everyone was so kind to me and I felt pretty special, everyday I learned how to pray, learned hadiths etc.. but I didn't stop searching for facts( that was my big thing, I mean I didn't leave my father's religion just to follow another one blindly) so I wanted to make sure everything made sense. I read about every sect of Islam, Sunnism, Shiism and the sects between them. I asked the local mosque about these sects and realized they were giving me wrong information about them very quickly( since every sect wants to impose there agenda on it's believers, especially on a convert). I listened to these mawlanas but realized they were huffing and puffing lies pretty quick as I looked in the books, I read as many books as I possibly could until I realized I needed to learn Arabic. I decided to learn Arabic and the more I learned the more I started realizing the deception led by religious leaders due to the lack of interest and education amongst muslims ( just like any other religion, people just want to hear rhetoric, as long as there religion is right and all others are inferior it makes them feel good). I decided that I needed to find the most unbiased sect of Islam and go from there, I did and I adhered to that school of thought for a very long time ( and up until this day I respect the critical thinking skills I gained from it). I went to a madrassa( seminary) and studied fiqh, Usul and aqaid, lughat, Nahw, balagh and mantiq for about 2 years and a half and eventually decided I wanted to goto university. And in University was when my perspectives started to change, I took classes on early Christiandom and Jesus. I was incredibly interested in early christianity and who Jesus actually was, the only thing is is that the more you look into early Christiandom the more you start to research judaism without even knowing it. I realized how christianity evolved borrowing gnostic and roman mystical concepts into its religion and this was only the beginning, I realized that christianity took the concepts of angels and demons and he'll and heaven, ressurection and judgment and created a dogma out of them. Before Christianity there were many jewish sects, and many individuals during a period of strife and turmoil who claimed to be messiahs ( as Jews we're awaiting a saviour) what I realized was the it was just incidental that who we call the Christians were the ones who just happened to thrive later. This put me in bewilderment and doubt about Islam, since Islamic eschatology is identical to christians(minus the rapture) and if Christian eschatology evolved from a mesh of pagan religious concepts and judaism then Islam is a culprit as well. Second was the manipulation of Hebrew words to prove that Jesus was the messiah, I realized( after learning hebrew and finishing the Torah about 5 times in Hebrew) that every verse that so call "talks" about Jesus is put out of context. If Jesus is not the messiah then Islam is not what it claims to be, this hit me hard. I didn't want to believe this but I couldn't deny facts. Furthermore the more I studied Halakha the more I realized how much of it Islam borrowed. The more I studied Midrash the more I realized how much of it was borrowed and inserted into the Quran. The more I studied Syrianic and coptic Christian liturgy the more I realized how much of it influenced Islam. So what was my conclusion through all my research and analysis: Islam was a combination of Christian eschatology and Jewish Halakha and monotheism. I have nothing against muslims and Islam, as it is a beautifull in it's own right, but I adhere to facts and the one thing I wasn't prepared to give up even for the Quran was my independent judgment through evidence and deduction. Moreover as I grew older and more accustomed to being around muslims I realized that I wasint anything special to them at all, its just that Islam is a religion that proselytizes ( Sikhism is not and actually is against it) and beleivers recieve rewards in heaven for proselytizing non muslims( I remember as a naive adult my mom telling me thus but I never listened). I tried to go back to the mosque a couple times to give it another shot and I remember in my head I told myself " God if this is wrong for me please let me know now" as soon as I walked in I see a poster of al maghrib institute classes with all the pictures of the lecturers with there eyes crossed out with black ink and I was like wow I ain't going back to this again ( fed up from all the arbitrary rules and there interpretations that sometimes goto the extreme) but I still ignored it and walked in and prayed and as soon as my prayer stopped a guy came up to me and told me I was praying the wrong way and he wanted my email so he could send me a "proper" way to do salat ( at this point I just shut my eyes and was like God strike me with a thunderbolt right now and strike this idiot while ur at it lol). Let me know your thoughts :) . I apologize if I offended you in anyway.