In an Ages of Lies, Be a Voice of Truth

In an Age of Lies, Be a Voice of Truth

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 85; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 157)

"The Hour will not be established until trials appear, lying becomes widespread, markets draw close to one another, and al-harj increases." A companion said, "Ya Rasulallah, what does al-harj mean? What does this word mean?" He said: "Killing."

Reflect on this. Lying becomes widespread — not just common, widespread — and the Prophet ﷺ linked it in the same breath to what? Trials, chaos, and bloodshed. Because falsehood is never harmless.

A lie is a seed, and its fruit is always destruction.

We Are Living in This Time

We are living in this time — not approaching it, living it. We live in an age where video can be fabricated of a world leader saying words he never said, and within hours, millions believe it. Deepfake fraud has surged over 2,000% in just the last three years. Eight million deepfake videos are estimated to have been shared just in 2025 alone — up half a million just two years before that. Artificial intelligence can now clone a person's voice, place their face on another's body, and manufacture a reality that never existed.

We live in an age where a single forwarded message on WhatsApp, on X or Twitter — a screenshot, unverified, unsourced, unchecked — can destroy a reputation, incite a community, or swing an election. And research tells us that nearly 80% of American adults have consumed fake news, and almost 1 in 4 admit to sharing false stories without verifying them. And we, the followers of Prophet Muhammad, the people who were given the Qur'an and the commands of verification as an act of faith, are not immune from that.

We forward, we share, we react, we assume and consume. And too often, we do all of this before we verify a single thing.

Why This Message, Why Now

My brothers and sisters, let me be very specific about why I am standing before you today with this message.

We are living in an election season. And every election season in this country brings a flood — not a trickle, a flood — of misinformation designed to manipulate you. Fabricated quotes attributed to candidates, decorated images, AI-generated audio clips, misleading headlines designed not to inform you, but to inflame you. Elected officials and those who seek office spreading rumors — not because they are true, but because they are useful. Useful for what? For power, for votes, for division.

And we are in a time also of war. We have watched with our own eyes a genocide unfold in Gaza — live, documented, broadcasted by every single news outlet, by the very people being killed filming it. And yet there are those who still try to tell you that what you have seen is not what is happening. Entire media institutions dedicated to making you doubt your own eyes.

This is perhaps the most dangerous form of deception in our time. Not just spreading a lie, but trying to erase a truth that we all — and the whole world — have watched and witnessed. And I can say the same thing about January 6th. And I can say the same thing about many incidents that took place in modern days.

And now we watch as tensions escalate in Iran as well, and the propaganda machines spin on all sides. One side manufactures a narrative to justify aggression, and another manufactures a narrative to justify its own. And caught in the middle are ordinary people like you and me — average people living in this country who simply want the truth, but are handed two competing versions of lies. This is how wars are sold to the public, brothers and sisters. Not with facts, but with narratives crafted long before the first bomb falls.

When falsehood becomes bold enough to contradict what you can see, and sophisticated enough to come dressed as patriotism or justice, you understand why verification — and the courage to stand by what is verified — is not just an intellectual exercise. It is a moral obligation at this point.

Our Community as a Target

And our community, the American Muslim community, is often a target. How many times have you seen a clip shared in your family group chat or on your social media of some Muslim saying something outrageous — taken out of context, edited down, or staged entirely — designed to make you react? How many times have politicians labeled Muslims as if it were an accusation, with claims attached that are either completely fabricated or built on a grain of truth buried under mountains of lies? And when you do check, as we should always do, you find nothing behind it. But millions of people, unfortunately, never bother to check. They see it, believe it, and carry it forward. And the damage is done. The fear takes root. The division deepens.

This is not accidental. There are people who profit from your panic. There are algorithms designed to feed you the content that makes you angriest, because anger keeps you scrolling, and scrolling keeps their revenue flowing. That is the whole point.

And just a few days ago, we started the month of April — April Fool's Day. Look, no one is saying don't have fun. We all enjoy a good laugh. But even our lighthearted culture around April Fool's tells us something: we have grown comfortable with deception as entertainment. And our culture speaks of "white lies" as if coloring a lie white makes it clean. A lie is a lie. Every faith tradition on earth teaches this.

But here is what truly deserves our attention. In our country, if you or I lie under oath in a courtroom or in Congress, we go to prison. If you lie to a federal agent, that is a felony. But if an elected official — someone who swore an oath to serve the people — lies to millions of voters, fabricates claims, and deceives an entire nation to hold on to power, that is called politics. That is considered normal.

How does it make any sense that a citizen is held to a higher standard of honesty than the people who govern them? If deception leads to harm, and misleading an entire country is harm, then it should not be legal — in my opinion — simply because the liar holds an official title or an office.

The Islamic Methodology of Truth

Brothers and sisters, our religion — the teaching of our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — did not leave us without guidance. Allah and His Messenger gave us a complete methodology, not just suggestions, for navigating exactly this kind of world. Let me walk you through it.

Principle One: Stop Before You Speak

Allah says in the Qur'an, referring to the affair of the slander (Hadith al-Ifk):

"And if only you had said, when you heard it, 'It is not for us to speak of this. Exalted are You — this is a great slander.'"

Notice the response Allah taught us: "It is not for us to speak of this." Not "let me investigate and get back to you." Not "let me share it and add I'm not sure if this is true." No. The first response is silence — resistance — the refusal to carry what you have not confirmed.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih Muslim, Introduction, Hadith 5; also recorded by Abu Dawud, Hadith 4992)

"It is enough of a lie for a person to narrate everything they hear."

Read it again. Listen to it again and again. It is enough of a lie to simply repeat everything you hear, to share everything you come across. You do not have to invent a lie to be a liar. All you have to do is pass it along — everything that reaches your ear or your screen — without checking it. Every unverified share, every forwarded rumor, every "I heard that" without a source — the Prophet ﷺ called it a lie.

Principle Two: Investigate

Allah says in the Qur'an:

"O you who believe, if there comes to you a disobedient one — an untrustworthy person — with information, investigate. Lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become regretful over what you have done."

That is what we have been ordered to do. The word in the Qur'an — tabayyan — means to seek clarity. In another recitation of this ayah, the word is tathabbatu — to confirm. The scholars explain the difference beautifully: tabayyin is knowing the matter as it truly is; tathabbatu is confirming whether the matter is even real in the first place.

Principle Three: Think Well of Others

The third principle you will find in this religion: think well of others — even when you are verifying, even when you have the information. The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Beware of suspicion. For suspicion is the most false of speech."

When a rumor reaches you about your brother, your sister, someone you know or don't know, your neighbor, another community, another people from another faith or religion — you do not simply believe it. Your default should be a good opinion, not suspicion. Not "well, where there is smoke, there is fire." No. Your position as a believer is to assume innocence until you see proof otherwise.

Principle Four: Consider the Consequences

Always, when you receive information, think about the consequences. That is what your book has taught you. That is what the tradition of your Prophet ﷺ has taught you. Allah says:

"When you received it with your tongues and said with your mouths that of which you had no knowledge, and you thought it was insignificant — while it was, in the sight of your Lord, tremendous."

"You thought it was insignificant." That is the most dangerous phrase in this entire passage — because that is exactly what we tell ourselves every time we share something without checking. "It's just a forward." "I'm just putting it out there." "I didn't say it, I'm just sharing it." And Allah told us: everything you say, everything you do, you will be held accountable for it on the Day of Judgment.

Principle Five: Leave What Does Not Concern You

The fifth principle — and I will end with this as part of the methodology we find in our book and our tradition — leave what does not concern you. That is a very important principle in our religion. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2317; Ibn Majah, Hadith 3976 — classified as hasan)

"From the excellence of a person's faith is leaving that which does not concern them."

Being nosy is not a good thing. I can tell you how many times I have had to give people their nose back because I found it in my own business. Not every story needs your commentary. Not every conflict needs your opinion. Not every viral moment needs your participation. Sometimes the most Islamic thing you can do — the wisest thing you can do — is to protect your faith, and protect your ears, eyes, and heart from being involved in it at all.

Why Do We Fall for It — and How Do We Fight Back?

So if it is clear that this is something we should avoid, why do people still fall for it? We fall for it because it confirms what we already feel. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. If you already have a negative opinion about certain communities, certain positions, certain things, you will immediately believe anything that aligns with that opinion. We fall for it because speed has replaced wisdom — everything has to be quick and we are in a rush all the time. We fall for it because we confuse emotions with evidence. When emotion runs high, we tend to believe things. We fall for it because we confuse opinions with facts.

If I have one piece of advice for how to navigate yourself in this digital age — where lies and confusion are everywhere — adopt the three befores:

Before you believe it. Before you feel it. Before you share it — verify it.

Simple as that. Before you believe it, before you let it make you angry or excited or whatever, before you share it — just verify it. Let that be your habit. It is simple, but it is not an easy thing to do.

Closing: A Complete Guidance for a Deceptive Age

My brothers and sisters, we live in a time where anyone can manufacture a lie and dress it up as truth. Artificial intelligence can create faces that never existed, voices that were never spoken, and events that never happened. Our phones have become weapons of mass deception that we carry willingly in our pockets. But Allah, in His infinite wisdom, prepared us for this. Fourteen hundred years ago, He revealed for us this methodology — and before that, a tradition present in every faith — telling us how we must verify and not spread rumors.

And I want to say that this topic is much bigger than elections, bigger than politics, bigger than the issue of deepfake videos. It has to do with your family — being suspicious of your family's activity, or your friends, or your neighbors. It has to do with many areas we need to think deeply about today and broaden our understanding of this concept. The fraudulent message, the fraudulent phone call, the email, identity theft — these are big issues today and people fall for them. That is a whole discussion for another time.

My brothers and sisters, even unfortunately, sometimes among the good people among us, there are those who will give you a half-truth or focus on exaggerating certain parts of the truth. Why? Because they want to get you excited — get you to donate, to support them, to gain more followers, more likes online. Whatever the reason is, that does not justify it. Deception is not a good thing.