When Rudy Giuliani — disbarred, publicly disgraced, a RICO defendant in Georgia, and an unindicted co-conspirator in federal court in Washington DC — positions himself as an authority on Islam, something has gone deeply wrong in our public discourse. In this episode of TheDeenShow (Ep. 1182), host Eddie and Dr. Ramy methodically dismantle Giuliani’s appearance on Benny Johnson’s platform, where the former New York City mayor attempted to “teach” Islam while holding what panellists quickly identified as a book by Robert Spencer — a career Islamophobe whose organisation has been flagged by anti-hate monitoring bodies — rather than an actual Quran. The backdrop to this moment carries its own quiet resonance: the very city where Giuliani once declared Muslim prayers at city hall “traumatic” has now elevated Zohran Mamdani, a practicing Muslim, as a leading political figure — a living rebuttal to everything Giuliani’s Islamophobia projects onto the faith of nearly two billion people.
Reading Hate Literature and Calling It the Quran
Giuliani’s central claim — that he has been studying the Quran since the age of 19 — collapsed under the simplest scrutiny when panellists noted that the book he held on camera was not a Quran at all, but almost certainly Robert Spencer’s polemic: a text built on selective quotation and ideological hostility rather than any genuine scholarly engagement with Islamic scripture. Dr. Ramy’s response was precise: if you do not read Arabic, you have not read the Quran — you have read a human translation of its meaning, and if that translation is filtered through deliberate distortion, you are critiquing something Muslims do not recognise as their faith. The Quran has stood for over 1,400 years as one of the most preserved texts in human history; non-Muslim historians have been unable to identify a historical inaccuracy, an internal inconsistency, or an unfulfilled prophecy within it. When Giuliani suggests its ordering was rearranged to conceal violent teachings, he reveals a fundamental misunderstanding — the Quran is arranged by surah length, not chronology, a fact any introductory study of Islam would immediately clarify. The episode draws a fair comparison: a hostile author could compile an equally alarming anthology from Numbers 31:17 or Matthew 10:34 stripped of context, and no reasonable person would accept that as an honest representation of Christianity. The same standard of fairness must be applied to the Book of Allah.
“If you’re going to study a primary text, study it in its original form. If you don’t understand Arabic, don’t say you’ve read the Quran. You can read a translation of the meaning — but read an authentic, scholarly one, and come to us with that critique.” — Dr. Ramy
- Source matters: Giuliani’s “Quran” was identified as a book by Robert Spencer — whose organisation anti-hate groups have labelled Islamophobic — not an Islamic scripture in any recognised translation.
- Context is non-negotiable: Quranic verses about conflict are specific to historical, war-time circumstances; the verses immediately surrounding them command kindness and justice toward those who do not fight, oppress, or displace Muslims.
- Preservation is unmatched: Manuscripts including the Birmingham Manuscript confirm the Quran has remained textually unchanged since the time of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ — its divine challenge to produce a comparable chapter has gone unanswered for fourteen centuries.
- The double standard: Cherry-picking violent passages from the Bible — Numbers, Deuteronomy, or Matthew — would produce an equally distorted portrait of Christianity; intellectual honesty demands the same contextual rigour be applied to all scriptures.
- Freedom of religion: The US Constitution was deliberately written to protect all faiths — including Islam — and Muslim prayers at city hall exemplify, not threaten, the founding principle its authors enshrined.
Iman Is Proven Through Action — A Standard That Cuts Both Ways
The theological heart of this episode is Dr. Ramy’s articulation of one of Islam’s most defining principles: iman, or faith, is not a label to claim — it is something embedded in the heart and demonstrated through conduct. In Islam, spirituality and action are inseparable. To declare “I am a believer” while consistently acting in contradiction to one’s stated faith is not merely a private failure — it is a theological incoherence that Islam refuses to accommodate. The panel applied this principle with careful fairness: Giuliani describes himself as a proud Catholic, yet his documented record — lying under oath, fraud, conduct leading to disbarment, and his own reported pride in his ability to deceive — maps precisely onto violations of the very commandments his tradition upholds. In Islamic understanding, your allegiance to Allah must precede your allegiance to professional convenience, political loyalty, or personal gain. The episode illustrated what this looks like in practice: the Muslims who cleaned up the streets of Harlem under the guidance and example of Hajj Malik el-Shabazz did so not because they were on a government payroll, but because their faith — their iman — demanded it of them. That is the Islam Giuliani has apparently never encountered, among the millions of Muslim constituents he once governed.
“In Islam, we don’t allow a separation between belief and action. Iman is embedded in your heart, but it is proven through action. You can’t say ‘I believe’ and then not follow the tenets of your religion. If you truly believe, you’re going to prove it through action.” — Dr. Ramy
What this episode ultimately demonstrates is that misinformation about Islam does not survive honest examination — not intellectually, not statistically, and not spiritually. One in every three people on earth is Muslim, spread across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Africa, and the West, and they are not, as Giuliani implies, a civilisational threat but a community guided by a faith that commands justice, mercy, and the elevation of those around them. For anyone who approaches the Quran with a sincere heart — as so many non-Muslims did during the events in Gaza, picking up the scripture out of genuine curiosity and finding their deepest questions met by its verses — Allah guides toward truth. That divine promise has not expired, and it extends even to those who have spent decades misrepresenting this faith. The open invitation to Rudy Giuliani — to sit down, speak honestly, and engage in civil dialogue on TheDeenShow — remains on the table, because the path toward understanding Islam has never been through polemic and fear; it has always been through the same clear light of guidance that has illuminated hearts, built civilisations, and transformed communities for fourteen hundred years.
