Islam attracts all sorts of people, from those looking for a sense of community, fleeing a dysfunctional life, or looking for a cause, to those who aren’t necessarily looking for something but simply come to be convinced of the genuine Abrahamic conception of God and the wider existential narrative preached by his descendent, Muhammad, the final messenger of God.
Yet one thing I’ve consistently noticed over a decade is how community leaders, activists and Muslim spokespersons are rarely (if at all) from the latter. They tend to either be those who found a (secular) cause in Islam or saw the faith as an extension of their ethnic identity that they were attempting to protect against rising racial prejudice we see across western societies. Very rare has it been to have someone speak on behalf of the faithful who simply believes Islam is a justifiable and convincing position to hold and has little baggage from the past. One would have had to have thought about these things deeply and engaged with the revealed word, which very few seem keen on actually doing.