Chapter 7: Who Speaks for Islam?

Welcome to “Islam Today,” a Substack series by human rights lawyer, author, and podcaster Qasim Rashid. This series offers a detailed, evidence-based, and accessible exploration of the life of Prophet Muhammad (sa)—who he was, what he taught, and why his life and legacy matter today. If you’re joining us midway through, we warmly invite you to start from Chapter 1 and follow along. Each installment builds on the last, and the full picture is worth the journey.

It wasn’t long after his 40th birthday. He climbed to the top of Mount Safa and called out to the people of Mecca.

They came quickly, drawn by the urgency in his voice, gathering below and looking up at the man who had summoned them. When enough had assembled, he asked them a question.

“If I were to tell you that there was an army behind this mountain, ready to attack you — would you believe me?”

The answer came without hesitation. Yes. They would believe him. They said so openly, without qualification for a very simple reason—they had never once heard this man lie. Not as a child. Not as a young man. Not as an adult who had lived his entire life among them. He was known throughout Mecca by a nickname that said everything about how they regarded him—Al-Ameen. The Trustworthy. The Truthful. Imagine! What a reputation. He had been entrusted with their most valuable possessions whenever they traveled. He had founded a justice league—a formal coalition—to defend the rights of the marginalized and persecuted. He had spoken, at every opportunity, with love and compassion.

They knew him. They trusted him with their lives.

He had asked the question to confirm exactly that. And now he had his answer.

“There is no army,” he said. “But I am a Warner, sent to you from God.”

How did they respond? We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Before we return to Mount Safa, we need to sit with a question that sits at the heart of everything this series is trying to do: who actually speaks for Islam?

It sounds simple. It is not.

In the years following September 11, 2001 — an atrocity that claimed nearly 3,000 innocent American lives and had absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Islam — millions of Americans received their first meaningful introduction to what they were told was the Muslim faith. That introduction did not come from Muslim scholars, from Islamic history, or from the 1,400 years of civilization, philosophy, art, science, and jurisprudence that Islam produced. It came from the people who flew those planes. It came from the media coverage that followed. It came, in many cases, from politicians and commentators who had every incentive to conflate a terrorist organization with a global faith of nearly two billion people.

No intelligent Christian would accept learning about Christianity from the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Republican Army, or the Lord’s Resistance Army. No intelligent person of any faith would agree that the most violent fringe of their tradition speaks for the whole. Yet that is precisely what millions of people were asked to accept about Islam — and many did.

This is what I call the intellectual tragedy of 9/11. And it did not end on September 12th. It has continued, fueled by a cottage industry of anti-Muslim propagandists who have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting a false narrative about Islam and its Prophet. Meanwhile, extremists who claim the banner of Islam — the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS — promote their own distorted version of the same false narrative, each side serving as the other’s most useful tool.

Both are wrong. Both cause harm. And both must be repudiated with equal force.

The answer, when you think about it clearly, is obvious — and yet it is the answer most consistently ignored in mainstream discourse.

Prophet Muhammad (sa) speaks for Islam.

He is the first Muslim. He is the most righteous Muslim who ever lived or ever will live. He received the revelation of the Qur’an. He lived it, embodied it, and demonstrated it across every domain of human life — as a husband, a father, a neighbor, a statesman, a judge, a military commander, and a spiritual guide. His wife Aisha, one of the great scholars of early Islam, summarized it in a single sentence that has echoed across fourteen centuries: “Muhammad (sa) is the walking Qur’an.”

No critic — however hostile, however well-funded, however loud — can deny that no greater spokesperson for Islam exists than Prophet Muhammad (sa) himself. They may misrepresent him. They may distort his teachings, strip his words of context, or cherry-pick incidents from his life and present them without the historical framework necessary to understand them. But they cannot replace him. He is, and remains, the standard.

And here is where it gets particularly interesting — because the standard he set is extraordinary by any measure.

By the age of eight, Muhammad (sa) had lost both of his parents and his grandfather. He grew up in his uncle’s home, an orphan in a society that did not regard orphans highly. Over the next three decades, he built a reputation so impeccable that his community gave him two nicknames that have never been forgotten: As-Sadiq — the Truthful — and Al-Ameen — the Trustworthy. He taught absolute justice in interpersonal and international affairs, equity between men and women, and an uncompromising commitment to freedom of conscience.

He did all of this before a single verse of the Qur’an was revealed to him.

This is the argument the Qur’an itself makes — and it is an argument so simple a child can grasp it, yet so airtight that no scholar has ever successfully refuted it. When questioned about his claim to prophethood, God commanded Muhammad (sa) to say: “I have indeed lived among you a whole lifetime before this. Will you not then understand?”

The challenge is direct: look at my entire life. Find a single lie. Find a single injustice. Find a single act that contradicts the character of a man sent by God.

History records that not a single contemporary — friend or foe, ally or adversary — could produce one. The criticism Muhammad (sa) received after his claim to prophethood was never of his character. It was of the claim itself. And the argument concludes simply: if Muhammad (sa) lived a demonstrably truthful and flawless life before his claim to prophethood, how could he suddenly lie about God?

He couldn’t. And his critics — even the most vehement ones, even the general who led the army against him — knew it.

This assessment is not the exclusive property of Muslims. Across centuries and across traditions, some of the most celebrated minds in human history have arrived at the same conclusion.

Dr. Michael Hart, in his landmark book The 100 Most Influential People in History, ranked Prophet Muhammad (sa) first — not merely as a religious leader, but as the single most influential human being who ever lived. He wrote of finding in Muhammad’s character “such diverse and manifold qualities, as it would be impossible to find in any other man whose biography has been preserved by history” — a king who never claimed mastery even over himself, who took pride only in being a servant of God.

The French poet and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine asked, in words that have never been adequately answered: “Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire — that is Muhammad (sa). As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?”

Annie Besant — British theosophist, women’s rights activist, and feminist — wrote that it is “impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knew how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme.”

Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw declared that he had “always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality” and that Muhammad (sa) “must be called the Saviour of Humanity.”

These are not Muslim apologists. These are Nobel laureates, poets, statesmen, historians, and feminist scholars — people with every reason to be critical and every credential to be credible. Their testimony spans centuries and crosses every conceivable cultural and religious divide.

When contemporary propagandists dismiss Muhammad (sa) with a single uninformed sentence, they are not merely insulting Muslims. They are casually overriding centuries of careful, considered, cross-cultural scholarship. That is not criticism. That is intellectual arrogance dressed up as courage.

Now we return to the man standing on the mountain.

He had asked the people of Mecca to testify to his trustworthiness, and they had done so without hesitation. He had then announced his prophethood. And much to his surprise — these same people who had just affirmed they would trust him with their lives — laughed at him. Ridiculed him. Turned their backs.

He called them to examine his entire life. They acknowledged it was without flaw. And still, they rejected him.

He descended from that mountain with only a handful of followers. And yet, that moment on Mount Safa contains, in miniature, everything you need to know about who Prophet Muhammad (sa) was. He did not threaten the people who laughed at him. He did not call for their punishment. He appealed to reason, to history, to the evidence of a life lived transparently among them — and he accepted their answer, however painful, without violence or vengeance.

That is the man who speaks for Islam.

Not the terrorists who claim his name while violating his every teaching. Not the propagandists who caricature him for profit and political gain. Not the ignorant clerics who strip his words of context and wield them like weapons.

Him. The man on the mountain. The orphan who adopted the world. The Trustworthy. The Truthful. The Mercy for all of Creation.

That is the standard. And it is a standard worth understanding — because understanding it is the most powerful antidote to the century of disinformation that has obscured it.

In the chapters ahead, we will examine his life in full — the man behind the name, the human being behind the legend. We will look at what he actually taught, how he actually lived, and why people across fourteen centuries and every corner of the globe have found in him something that changed their lives.

The story of who he was is the most powerful argument for what Islam actually is.

And that story is just beginning.

Next: Chapter 8 — Aren’t Muslims Who Act Violent Just Following Islam?

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