Which religion bans their followers from learning about other religions?

Answer 1

In the modern world, most religious leaders understand that their followers will be exposed to other faiths, so generally, they know it is impossible to prevent people from coming into contact with (or finding out about) other beliefs. Hundreds of years ago, it was much easier to ban the study of other faiths than it is today: for example, several hundred years ago, most Catholics were not allowed to learn about other religions, nor participate in interfaith dialogue of any kind. (It should be noted that this is no longer the position of the Catholic Church, which changed its views about ecumenism after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.) But that said, there are certainly some sects in all the major religions that try to restrict what believers are able to learn about other faiths, or they actively discourage students from learning the tenets of other religions. But actually banning the study of other religions was much more common in the era before the internet than it is now.

Some extremely fundamentalist sects of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism maintain an isolationist attitude: they want their followers to only study the proper texts and the proper scriptures (their own, in other words), since other religions are considered false. But this attitude is not the majority view. Most Muslims, Christians, and Jews today do learn about other religions, and are taught to respect them, even if they do not agree with the theological interpretations of those religions. Some mainstream sects of Christianity still teach that only theirs is the true religion, and non-believers will not be saved: many evangelical Baptists, for example, believe that those who are not born-again believers will go to hell, and there are some Muslims who also believe that the non-believer is an enemy of God (Allah). Religions which believe that theirs is the only correct path to God will often allow the study of other religions at the college level, but the understanding is that these other religions are either false or misguided.