The best way to tell if someone is an imposter is by seeing him in desperate times; in places where there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Perhaps situations where death was the only other option. Well, Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) had plenty of incidences like that.

And nothing proves your sincerity more than the battlefield, where you don’t know if you will live to see the next day. As mentioned in another article, Prophet Muhammad would be in the front line of battles and a source of confidence. His cousin, Ali (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهُ) said,

“If the fighting became fierce when the two nations met, we used to seek protection from the Messenger of Allah. And none of us were nearer to the enemy than he was!”

[Source: Ahmad]

I want to take you to one particular one and that is the Battle of Badr. In this, the Muslims numbered about 313. On the other side, the enemies numbered about 1,000. A fight was not originally planned and thus, the Muslims were not in full-battle attire. It didn’t make sense for the Muslims to want to fight. Yet, they chose to. And the night before the fight, what did Prophet Muhammad do? Panic? Call it quits and tell his people, “Okay guys, let’s just go home”? Or run away? Nope! He stayed up to pray to God. If you’re an imposter who’s making up that there’s a God and that you’re a messenger sent by Him, the last thing you’ll do is put yourself in life or death situations. Why would you want to go to battles, especially ones where you are disadvantaged? Besides that, the last thing you’ll do before a battle, especially in private, is to pray to the very idea you made up.

Finally, what did he do before the fight actually started? He raised his hands to the skies and passionately prayed to God pleading for victory. We should ask ourselves: what kind of an imposter does all that?