Five Pillars of Islam
Islam’s fundamental duties, practices, and beliefs are summarized in the “five pillars” of the faith, laid down in one of prophet’s hadith, and accepted by all Muslims. The five pillar are the profession of faith, daily prayer, payment of the zakat (alms-tax), fasting in the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. These are religious obligations. By themselves they are not sufficient to define the virtuous life, because a good Muslim must also observe a relationship of charity and justice with other members of his community, but the five pillars are the obligatory fundamentals of Islamic practice.
The Profession of Faith (1)
The first pillar is the shahada, the profession of faith: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. This was a revolutionary proposition when Muhammad preached it in seventh-century Arabia, for despite the Arabians’ claim of descent from Abraham and their extensive contacts with monotheism, they were pagan polytheists.
The shahada, the basic statement of Islam, is now emblazoned on the flag of Saudi Arabia, but in Muhammad’s time there was no Arabian nation. The people of the Arabian peninsula were grouped in tribes and families, some city-dwellers, some nomads, and their spiritual allegiance was parceled out to a variety of local deities and idols.
Among these pagan deities one commanded a wider loyalty than the others and was known as Allah, which is the Arabic word for god. Cesar Farah, in his book Islam, calls Allah “the paramount deity of pagan Arabia,” recognized from Yemen to the Mediterranean. Enshrined as the principal god of the Kaaba, the pagan pantheon at Mecca, he was accorded as status above the petty gods and idols worshiped by individual tribes and local groups. He was more than equal gods, but less than unique.
That Allah, however, is not the God of Islam. Muhammad used the same word, Allah, but he taught that Allah is the One God, the God of Abraham and Moses, and that is was an error to worship any other. Embracing monotheism, he swept away all the lesser gods and their idols. Worshiping the one God, he taught that the local deity falsely called Allah should be abandoned and that Allah, the one God, the God of the Jews and Christians, should be worshiped.
The Koran clearly identifies Allah with the God of the Hebrews. The God who spoke to Moses during the wanderings in the desert, the God who watched over Joseph when he was betrayed by his brothers, the God who saved Noah from the deluge, is Allah, God of the Jews and God of the Muslims. “He has knowledge of all things,” the Koran says. “He has ordained for men the faith He has revealed to you and formerly enjoined on Noah and Abraham, on Moses and Jesus, saying, ‘Observe this faith and be united in it.’”(42:13)
As described in the Koran, God is unique, everlasting, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, and living. He knows everything, created everything, and controls all destinies. He is not a formed body or a substance; He is not bounded by dimensions. He sees without eyes, hears without ears, knows without a brain. (Because He has no physical attributes, there can be no portrait or statue of Him. Muslims regards all statues, icons, and representations of the Deity as sacrilegious).
God created the earth, the heavens, the element, men, angels, and jinn. The Jinn are mysterious creatures, invisible to man, defined by the Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman in his Islam as “an invisible order of creation, parallel to man, but said to be created of a fiery substance, a kind of duplicate of man which is, in general, more prone to evil and from which the Devil is also said to have sprung.” The Koran says God created the jinn, but tells us little about them. They seem to be spirit-creatures, whose impact on the lives of men is only tangential.
The God of the Koran is never seen but always felt, because everything that exist and everything that happens is a sign of Him. He is “Sovereign Lord, the Holy One, the Giver of Peace, the Keeper of the Faith, the Guardian, the Mighty One, the All-powerful, the Most High! He is Allah, the Creator, the originator, the Modeler.” (59:23) His knowledge of all things is both universal and detailed. “Are you not aware that Allah knows what the heavens and earth contain? If three men talk in secret together, He is their fourth; if four, He is the fifth; if five, He is the sixth. Whether fewer or more, wherever they may be, He is with them” (58:17)
What God is not is progenitor or offspring. The Christians concept of the Son of God as one with God and equal to God is specifically and repeatedly repudiated in the Koran, which describes Jesus as a prophet and no more. The uncompromising monotheism of Islam is incompatible with the Trinitarian deity. To Muslims, acceptance of the three-natured God is tantamount to worshiping three deities, when there is only one. The association of any person or object with the Deity is the one sin that Allah will not forgive, according to the Koran.
“Allah is one, the Eternal God,” the Koran says, in Sura 112. “He begot none, no was he begotten. None is equal to Him.” As for the divine Son of God, the Koran is unequivocal: “Those who say, ‘The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son,’ preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might cracks, the earth break asunder and the mountains crumble to dust. That they should ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it does not become Him to beget one!.”(19:88)
Islam’s fundamental duties, practices, and beliefs are summarized in the “five pillars” of the faith, laid down in one of prophet’s hadith, and accepted by all Muslims. The five pillar are the profession of faith, daily prayer, payment of the zakat (alms-tax), fasting in the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. These are religious obligations. By themselves they are not sufficient to define the virtuous life, because a good Muslim must also observe a relationship of charity and justice with other members of his community, but the five pillars are the obligatory fundamentals of Islamic practice.
The Profession of Faith (1)
The first pillar is the shahada, the profession of faith: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. This was a revolutionary proposition when Muhammad preached it in seventh-century Arabia, for despite the Arabians’ claim of descent from Abraham and their extensive contacts with monotheism, they were pagan polytheists.
The shahada, the basic statement of Islam, is now emblazoned on the flag of Saudi Arabia, but in Muhammad’s time there was no Arabian nation. The people of the Arabian peninsula were grouped in tribes and families, some city-dwellers, some nomads, and their spiritual allegiance was parceled out to a variety of local deities and idols.
Among these pagan deities one commanded a wider loyalty than the others and was known as Allah, which is the Arabic word for god. Cesar Farah, in his book Islam, calls Allah “the paramount deity of pagan Arabia,” recognized from Yemen to the Mediterranean. Enshrined as the principal god of the Kaaba, the pagan pantheon at Mecca, he was accorded as status above the petty gods and idols worshiped by individual tribes and local groups. He was more than equal gods, but less than unique.
That Allah, however, is not the God of Islam. Muhammad used the same word, Allah, but he taught that Allah is the One God, the God of Abraham and Moses, and that is was an error to worship any other. Embracing monotheism, he swept away all the lesser gods and their idols. Worshiping the one God, he taught that the local deity falsely called Allah should be abandoned and that Allah, the one God, the God of the Jews and Christians, should be worshiped.
The Koran clearly identifies Allah with the God of the Hebrews. The God who spoke to Moses during the wanderings in the desert, the God who watched over Joseph when he was betrayed by his brothers, the God who saved Noah from the deluge, is Allah, God of the Jews and God of the Muslims. “He has knowledge of all things,” the Koran says. “He has ordained for men the faith He has revealed to you and formerly enjoined on Noah and Abraham, on Moses and Jesus, saying, ‘Observe this faith and be united in it.’”(42:13)
As described in the Koran, God is unique, everlasting, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, and living. He knows everything, created everything, and controls all destinies. He is not a formed body or a substance; He is not bounded by dimensions. He sees without eyes, hears without ears, knows without a brain. (Because He has no physical attributes, there can be no portrait or statue of Him. Muslims regards all statues, icons, and representations of the Deity as sacrilegious).
God created the earth, the heavens, the element, men, angels, and jinn. The Jinn are mysterious creatures, invisible to man, defined by the Islamic scholar Fazlur Rahman in his Islam as “an invisible order of creation, parallel to man, but said to be created of a fiery substance, a kind of duplicate of man which is, in general, more prone to evil and from which the Devil is also said to have sprung.” The Koran says God created the jinn, but tells us little about them. They seem to be spirit-creatures, whose impact on the lives of men is only tangential.
The God of the Koran is never seen but always felt, because everything that exist and everything that happens is a sign of Him. He is “Sovereign Lord, the Holy One, the Giver of Peace, the Keeper of the Faith, the Guardian, the Mighty One, the All-powerful, the Most High! He is Allah, the Creator, the originator, the Modeler.” (59:23) His knowledge of all things is both universal and detailed. “Are you not aware that Allah knows what the heavens and earth contain? If three men talk in secret together, He is their fourth; if four, He is the fifth; if five, He is the sixth. Whether fewer or more, wherever they may be, He is with them” (58:17)
What God is not is progenitor or offspring. The Christians concept of the Son of God as one with God and equal to God is specifically and repeatedly repudiated in the Koran, which describes Jesus as a prophet and no more. The uncompromising monotheism of Islam is incompatible with the Trinitarian deity. To Muslims, acceptance of the three-natured God is tantamount to worshiping three deities, when there is only one. The association of any person or object with the Deity is the one sin that Allah will not forgive, according to the Koran.
“Allah is one, the Eternal God,” the Koran says, in Sura 112. “He begot none, no was he begotten. None is equal to Him.” As for the divine Son of God, the Koran is unequivocal: “Those who say, ‘The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son,’ preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might cracks, the earth break asunder and the mountains crumble to dust. That they should ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it does not become Him to beget one!.”(19:88)
1 comment:
The Five Pillars of Islam was given to Abraham not to Muhammad. The only religion acceptable by Allah was Islam. Abraham was the first prophet of Islam. If you do your research carefully you will find that Islam is older than the Quran. And Mohammad only followed the religion which was given to Abraham. That is one of the key reason why we don't find the detail of the Five Pillars in Quran mainly they were already in practice. Hadiths has nothing to do with explanation.
If you read Quran carefully, you will find that Muhammad was forbidden to explain the Quran.
Post a Comment