relying heavily on unsafe becomes a red flag. It implies that the author of the code has a tendency to play fast and loose
It does not imply that. It might mean that the author knows what he's doing. Or not. We don't know without auditing the code.
defeat the ostensible purpose of choosing a language like Rust in the first place
The OP didn't try to choose a language - they tried to choose a piece of software that solves their problem. Seemed like the software was rejected on wrong grounds.