There is a difference between deliberately promoting something untrue about a religion and saying that some people believe something untrue about a religion. It's the difference between being in the group that people label as bigots and pointing out that some bigots exist but not being among the group.
Once you continue to promote something that is not true, but you want people to believe, about any group even after you have knowledge to the contrary, then you are deliberate in your attempt to negatively stereotype a group.
You are at that point, in fact, a bigot. Even if you pretend you have "friends" that just happened to have been over the weekend before you read the article that just happened to talk about that falsehood over dinner....