If you believe Rust zero cost abstraction - being safe doesn't mean it has to be compared to safe languages because Rust and C can translate into same assembler code. But in Rust the compiler gives you more guarantees.

I would say that a proper way to rephrase it would be to use idiomatic code vs unidiomatic. If you start using any high-level language in a non intended fashion (writing non idiomatic code) probably most of them would be faster.