Pillars of Islam and
Their Importance
To recapitulate, our first and foremost
duty is to practice our faith by accepting and fulfilling all of our
obligations. For this purpose, four
terms are employed: (1) Islam, (2)
Obedience (ita`ah) (3) Abstinence (taqwa), and (4) Worship (`ibadah). Of these, Worship (`ibadah) is the
most Comprehensive term since it stands for total and unrelenting subservience
to God out of His love. We have also
elucidated the perilous state of hypocrisy and that total submission as desired
in Islam might not be as simple as is prevalent today in the popular
imagination. However, God has been gracious to confer upon us four modes of
worship, which if performed diligently can make the task easy. It is reported on the authority of Abdullah
ibn `Umar that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said:
“Islam is based upon
five things, testifying that there is no god besides Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger, establishing the
Prayer, paying zakah, performing the pilgrimage and fasting the month of
Ramadan. On uttering the above
creedal testimony, one enters the fold of Islam and remains in its fold by
practically observing the other four tenets.
Together, these five have become to be commonly known as the “pillars of
Islam”. We inadvertently call the last
four as `ibadaat, whereas these are actually the exercises that are to
generate within us the spirit of `ibadah.
The Qur'an does not
use the term `ibadah for any of these modes of worship. Rather, it reserves the term `ibadah
for describing the holistic concept and attitude that has been presented
earlier.
To summarize, worship signifies immense
love for God and His subservience in our overall attitude, behavior and
ambitions. The above-mentioned modes of
worship prepare the believer mentally for the fulfillment of such a life and
help remove the obstructions in the path of faith and its practice. Thus the divine directive for prayers is that
one should suspend his/her worldly activities five times a day and stand before
God to affirm: “We worship only You and
we seek assistance only from You.” This
affirmation renews our relationship with the Divine. The Qur'an describes the wisdom and purpose
of prayers by saying: “Offer prayers for remembering Me.” By keeping the remembrance of God fresh in
the minds of those who pray, it protects them from falling into forgetfulness
and indifference.
By the same token, zakah
has been prescribed so that one should be purged from the love of wealth, which
can be potentially fatal for one’s moral and spiritual health and the root
cause of many evils. Fasting has been prescribed
so that one may develop a sense of taqwa or abstinence, enhancing the
ability to avoid disobedience. The human
self is prone to weaknesses. Fasting
helps one to be protected from the unbridled desires of the self. All the blessings accruing from these “modes
of worship” appear in their combined form in the religious duty of Hajj.
The Hajj includes prayer (the remembrance of God, the ihmram which
has restrictions resembling fasting, and the expenses that are incurred
resembling the zakah. In summary,
these four pillars of Islam have been prescribed not as the essence of the
Islamic teachings, but as the basic edifice upon which the structure of Islam
can be erected. These pillars act as the
ramparts for faith. God has done us a
great favor by giving us these methods for conditioning ourselves for His
service.
Let us now turn attention to the second
duty of conveying the message of Islam to others.
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