First Thoughts about Islam: Seeing as so many, with so little qualification to do so, are weighing in on the subject of Islam these days, I might as well join the chorus:

Unlike most of my compatriots,  I can, just, give a bare account of the   Five Pillars  of Islam:   (1) There is but one God, Allah, whose Prophet is Mohammed; (2) Prayer is to be performed/recited (in Arabic) five times a day (with, I believe, concomitant ablutions); (3) Alms are to be given to the poor at an established minimum rate of 2.5%; (4) you must faithfully observe the fast of Ramadan, in all its minutiae;  (5) wind and weather, and other circumstance permitting, you must visit Mecca at least once in your lifetime.

The word of God was  written, in Arabic, by the Prophet Mohammed, in chapters called Surahs, subdivided into verses, as these were dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel; the whole body of which were compiled into the Holy Qur'an.  All prayers, scriptural and religious instruction are given in the Arabic language; converts are obliged to learn Arabic.

So far, so clear, and, if different at all from other Abrahamic religions, differing rather in the direction of the distinctness and isolation of thought which can only be formulated in one unchanging, classic (if not dead) language.  Above all, absolutely Monist in its conception of God. You get, from the punctility of its prayers and ablutions, from the institutionalized charity, and the humbly assumed religious duties and obligations, that the practitioners of Islam are a polite, hospitable, decently behaved, cleanly people.  And certainly if you have any experience of them personally or socially, you will be confirmed in your glow of approbation for them ("They," of course, being the men and boys who, only, are permitted to have a social presence):  They are passionate, exquisite friends; wonderful fathers; charming children, perfectly secure in their fathers' love, playful and polite.

Then you begin to hear of something called "Conversion by the Sword"--of which Allah and his Prophet (as recorded somewhere in the Holy Qu'ran) are not the least ashamed, and have never renounced.  No more than, say, the Church of Rome has ever repented of its having for so many long, bloody centuries maintained a Holy Office of the Inquisition.  But Moslems--never having experienced an "Enlightenment" which openly mocked all Faith as Superstition--seem a good deal more reluctant than Christians to acknowledge the Absurdity of Religion, and are much more inclined to get testy, even violent, when Islam, Allah and Mohammed are ridiculed.  Silly of them, but that's how they are.