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I agree with what you have said so far except this one.  I have been with people of many religions and found their intellectuals are always secular in research e.g. Jehovah's witness are very very fundamentalist Christians.  However their research about Islam is very secular as printed in their paper.  Their conclusion is not secular ofcourse.  Then you can read ""Christian Science Monitor"" which is also a very fundamentalist organization's paper.  You can not point a finger on their secular research.  Again, their POV appears seperately.  I am a staunch fundamentalist Muslim (fundamentalist meaning sticking to fundamentals as foundation and building over it, not sticking to fundamentals and destroy all construction over it).  However I am certified in studies of Old Testament and the new Testaments and have done a lot of faith sharing to form my own knowledge about Jews and Christians, not what the Mullah told me when I was a kid. "