Well, you make me think. But I was damaged in the brain as I left the womb.
I may believe in rebirth and karma, but I do not use this to justify abusing sufferers. I scorn gods (if they exist they will die and go to hells, since they are not epitomes of good conduct), and my beliefs in rebirth/different realms does not affect my conduct. I could be wrong about the mystical elements of Buddhism, but I still benefit from Buddhist phenomonology and ethics.
Welcome YellowSky
Don't worry, as long as you keep your beliefs to yourself, and don't impose them on anyone, unless communicating them when someone asks about them specifically, you shouldn't have a problem.
Like many others here, I have a lot of respect for some parts of Buddhist philosophy, but as a religion, I do not subscribe to it. I find it less distasteful than the Abrahamic religions, but only because it is not as hegemonic in the countries I have lived in. In places like Thailand, etc., I have heard of some pretty obscene, exploitative practices being justified by Buddhism, and it makes me wary.
At the very least, it's a shame that so many religious Buddhists do things that are similar to Abrahamics i.e. worshipping someone who did not want to be worshipped (explicitly, in Buddha's case), letting clergy get away with all sorts of things, using religion as an excuse, channeling money and time into religious practice/prayer/institutions that could be better used actually doing something to alleviate social ills.
Truly, I did not come here to convert (although that would be good), but to gain some solace for my depression, which I treat with Buddhism and medication. Unfortunately, reading about Islam makes me extremely depressed, so I was wondering whether the propaganda about the tremendous growth of Islam is true.
Sorry to hear about your depression. As for Islam, true it is a dogma, like Christianity and many others, but you don't have to worry. The likelihood of Islam "taking over" is mostly in the imagination of scared, right-wing, dogmatic (supremacist) Muslims and scared, right-wing, dogmatic (supremacist) non-Muslims. Different regions of the world are different, in some places Islamic dogma is the big problem, in other places it is the dogma of Christianity, Nationalism, Laissez-Faire Capitalism etc. Islam is one of the big monsters of our times, but it is not the only one. The tricky part is to not let any one monster blind you to the others.