From Doubt to Faith: Discovering Islam

Published January 18, 2026 · Updated February 8, 2026

Part 2: Prophets and Revelations

Prophets (Part 2.2)

There was no nation to whom a warner was not sent. (35:24)

Such claims appear throughout the Quran in different wordings and contexts. These verses challenged my earlier assumption that prophets were mythical figures and raised new questions about how widely God’s guidance might have reached.

What the Quran consistently affirms, though, is that God continuously sent His messengers throughout human history. According to prophetic narrations, this chain may have included hundreds of thousands of individuals, though not all are named or mentioned in the preserved scriptures. The Quran mentions twenty-five by name but points to many more. Who these many other messengers were, and where they lived, remains unknown as indicated in this verse to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him):

And We have already sent messengers before you. Among them are those whose stories We have told you, and others We have not told you. (40:78)

The Quran sometimes leaves out details that do not serve its core message, and these verses seem to do the same. Rather than offering a full historical record of every messenger, they point to the continuous nature of divine communication with humankind. Perhaps it reached peoples everywhere, in one way or another. How that guidance appeared, and whether it survived in a scripture or through other means, is a question the Quran leaves open.

In the Quranic accounts, prophets addressed the challenges specific to their societies. They often confronted the powerful elites who resisted any message that threatened their status quo. And as mentioned earlier, many of the issues they addressed in their stories remain strikingly familiar today.

The story of the Prophet Noah (peace be upon him) shows, for example, how following the crowd – especially those with power, wealth, or status – can mislead people into thinking they are following the arbiters of truth. Obsession with power and position, arrogance, and an unwillingness to let go of one’s ego can blind a person to the truth, as seen in Pharaoh’s confrontation with Moses (peace be upon him). And many other problems today – like injustice, oppression, fraudulent business practices, corruption, or hollow materialism – were in their own times also challenged by the prophets. They fought against the systems that allowed such harms to flourish.

The Quran calls the believers to honour all prophets without distinction – Moses, Jesus, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Jonah, and many others. It even describes their religion as one (42:13). The heart of their shared message was to worship God alone. This matters because at the root of many problems we face – personally and collectively – lies the act of giving ultimate authority to anything or anyone other than the Creator. This can happen in the form of idol worship, blindly following political or cultural elites, adhering to inherited customs and norms, or even placing one’s own desires above everything else. These ‘alternative gods’ continue to shape how we define truth, success, and our moral compass – often without us even noticing.

For me, a real eye-opener was realizing that the prophets came with one and the same mission: calling people back to one God. In essence, they were allies in the same cause – “brothers” in faith, as the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) described them.

Yet people often cling more tightly to group identities than to this shared, unifying call. In the next part, I’ll share how the Quran challenged a similar fear I once had: that embracing its message would threaten my cultural or national identity, and my assumptions about who the Quran was “for.”