I wrote below about the difference between Christian and Mormon epistemology. Simply put, Christianity accepts reason and evidence in discerning truth about reality and Mormonism does not.

Unfortunately, the same is true of Islam (and most other religions, as far as that goes). The reason it is difficult to reason with a Muslim (and I have tried) is that they don’t accept the validity of reason. Islam is a fideistic religion. That is to say, it celebrates the fact that it is irrational and lacking any usual type of truth claim supporting evidence. In the same manner that Latter Day Saints approach Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, Muslims must accept that Mohammad was prophet and the Koran is a holy book simply on blind, irrational trust. To inquire at all into the validity of those claims is considered a sinful lack of "faith"

The LA Times Time Rutten does a nice job of exposing this problem in today’s column. He notes that back in the middle ages, the major scholars of the three monotheistic religions went their separate ways epistemologically. While Christianity’s Thomas Aquinas and Judaism’s Moses Maimonides were adamant (and rightly so) "that that there exists a single truth and that faith, properly understood, never can conflict with reason," Islam’s Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes, "held that there were two truths — that of revelation and that of the
natural world. There was no need to reconcile them because they were
separate and distinct."

Rutten rightly notes that "[i]t was a form of intellectual suicide and cut off much of the
Islamic world from the centuries of scientific and political progress
that followed.

Read the rest of the column for some interesting insight into the media double standard regarding freedom of the press and while you’re at it, check out The Victory of Reason : How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark.

Don Johnson Evangelistic Ministries