Islam is an Abrahamic faith that originated in the Middle-East, where it is currently the dominant faith.

I think that, of all the ‘“Asian”’ religions, Islam is the one that suffers most from Orientalism. To the point that the West (as a whole) seems to believe a lot of myths about Islam.

Now, to clarify, I’m using the term ‘Orientalism’ to refer to viewing something with a primarily Western/ignorant bias attached to it. This is a bit different from how Academia uses the term (which has a Post-Colonial flavor).
I’m also merging it with the term ‘whitewashing’ – a sanitization of something or other.
In this case, I’m making the claim that Islam is often misrepresented and (unjustly?) sanitized. Particularly in the West.

Basically, the thing that I’d like to get across before I get into everything else is this: Islam is the ultimate “no fun allowed” religion.
Besides that, I think it’s fair to say that Islam is misogynist. Consider that I don’t like using that term because of its strong association with radical feminism, so me using it should tell you all you need to know. And since I quite like femininity, girls and girls being girls, I don’t really think highly of Islam in this regard.

Now, what do I mean by “no fun allowed”? Islam is exceptionally strict in ways that most people have no idea about. This actually results in a bizarre situation where the aesthetic of Islam/Arabism is applied in ways that would actually make no sense if you consider the ‘doctrine’ of Islam.
One of the big ones is Syncretism and vaguely-related stuff. Islam is uniquely opposed to melding with other religions. It’s a big reason Islamic fundamentalists go out of their way to destroy non-Islamic artifacts.
I’m mentioning syncretism in particular because there’s a particular sci-fi story that suggests that Islam not only survives thousands of years into the future (becoming dominant), but also merges with another religion. It’s called DUNE and it’s one of the least believable parts of the setting. Read that here.
Now, I’m mentioning syncretism in particular because it’s the part of the faith that is most relevant to worldbuilders, but there are other aspects to consider.
The Quran is considered absolute in (most of the mainstream branches) of Islam and, as part of that, there are a lot of things that can’t be re-interpreted. While re-interpreting the Bible is the norm in most Christian denominations, that isn’t the case with the Quran. If the Quran says that you have to do something a certain way…then that’s that, you do it that way. If it says you shouldn’t do something, then that means you can’t do something and remain a Muslim.
In practice these laws are sometimes (often) just ignored. I think Egypt is a pretty good example of an Islamic country that tends to ignore Islamic doctrine. But this is still something that needs to be considered.

What bothers me the most is that Westerners in particular have conflated the arab aesthetic with Islam. Though I’ll say more on that later. Along with me mentioning things like the fetishization of the hijab (which is also anti-Islamic by the way), Islam’s (weird) alliance with SocJus and why I think the hijab is sometimes seen as a feminist symbol.

Besides those things, though, I think I’ll mostly leave Islam alone, since I don’t really want to think about it that hard. Note that I do like Arab architecture and Calligraphy. That stuff is usually really good.