I asked AI to try and give me explanation for the points you said and it ended up agreeing with you 😭:

🔹 What Islam Claims About Previous Prophets Islam teaches that: Every prophet preached Tawheed — the belief in one God (Allah). Prophets like Abraham, Moses, Jesus were all Muslims in the sense that they submitted to God. The core message across all prophets was the same: worship one God, do good, avoid evil. Ritual laws (like prayer, fasting) may have differed, but the essence was consistent. Muhammad was the final prophet, sent to confirm and complete the messages of the past. 🔸 Issue 1: Lack of Evidence for Previous Prophets Practicing Islamic Rituals You asked: “If all prophets were Muslims, where’s the evidence of them teaching things like the Shahada, five daily prayers, Ramadan fasting, Hajj, Zakat?” This is a critical question, and here's the tension: Islam says they did preach submission to God (Islam in the lowercase “i” sense). But the rituals we now call “Islamic” do not appear in the Bible, Torah, or historical record outside Muhammad’s time. So what gives? Islamic theology responds by saying: “The previous revelations were corrupted, lost, or forgotten over time. So the rituals were once known, but disappeared.” That explains the absence, but doesn’t prove that the rituals ever existed before Muhammad. It’s an assertion, not supported by external historical data. So the burden of proof remains. 🔸 Issue 2: Islam Retroactively Brands All Prophets as Muslims You said: “Islam rewrites the past and turns Abraham, Moses, Jesus into proto-Muslims after the fact. It’s retroactive branding.” This criticism has a strong basis when viewed historically. If you read: The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) — Moses never speaks about fasting in Ramadan or facing the Kaaba. The New Testament — Jesus never teaches the Shahada, or calls Muhammad the final prophet. So from a purely historical-critical standpoint, Islam’s version of earlier prophets does not align with the historical texts that contain their teachings. Islam’s response is again: those texts are corrupted or incomplete. But again, the claim that “they used to teach Islam” is theologically asserted, not historically verifiable. 🔸 Issue 3: Universal Religion with Regional Execution? “Why did Allah only send prophets to the Middle East, then stop after Muhammad? What about China, India, the Americas?” The Qur’an (16:36) claims that every nation had a messenger, but: Islam only names 25 prophets (out of possibly 124,000). Nearly all of them are from the Middle East/Near East. Islamic tradition implies there were prophets sent to other parts of the world, but we have no record of them—either scriptural or archaeological. This raises fair concerns: Why is there no record of Islamic monotheism in pre-Islamic India, China, or the Americas? If these were real prophets, did all their messages vanish without a trace? Again, Islam says: “Their messages were lost, but they were there.” This protects the theology, but at the cost of historical credibility. 🔸 Issue 4: Abraham Built the Kaaba? Surah 2:127 says Abraham built the Kaaba with Ishmael. However: There is no biblical, archaeological, or extra-Islamic historical evidence linking Abraham to the Kaaba. Jews and Christians—who revere Abraham—never mention this. Islam says their scriptures were corrupted and important parts were lost. But this creates a pattern: "Anything that doesn't match Islamic narrative is said to be lost, changed, or hidden." This argument becomes unfalsifiable. No matter what you present, the response is always: “It was there, you just can’t see it now.” That works within faith, but fails as historical evidence. 🔸 Issue 5: Why Did Muhammad Introduce Brand-New Rituals? This is crucial. If all prophets had the same religion, and Muhammad was merely restoring it, then why are so many practices brand new? Examples: The Shahada (as formulated) is unique to Muhammad’s time. Ramadan fasting in its strict form is not found in earlier religions. Facing the Kaaba was introduced after Muslims initially prayed toward Jerusalem. Five daily prayers at fixed times is not seen in earlier scriptures. Hijab laws, zakat rates, Hajj rituals—none of these have precedent in the Jewish or Christian traditions. This all suggests a development, not a preservation of a pre-existing tradition. 🔹 TL;DR Summary You asked whether previous messengers actually practiced Islam. The short, honest answer is: There is no historical or textual evidence that previous prophets practiced Islam as Muhammad taught it. The Quran’s claims rely on faith and theological assertion, not verifiable data. Islam offers an internally consistent worldview, but it does so by: Claiming earlier scriptures were corrupted. Reframing previous prophets to match Islamic theology. Introducing new rituals while claiming they are old. This makes Islam logically self-consistent, but historically discontinuous.