Muhammad's message rests on Five Pillars

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 5, 2001 by Terry Muck

Communitarian emphasis, other features present non-Islamic people with questions

Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world in the past 50 years, with a growth so pronounced that there are more Muslims in the United States than there are Episcopalians or Presbyterians.

One of the three monotheistic religions with roots in the Middle East, like Judaism and Christianity, Islam traces its history to worship of the one God (Allah) instituted by Abraham. Muslims claim for this common history the traditional prophets and leaders of Jewish and Christian history such as Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham and Jesus, but believe that this line of genuine prophets ends with Muhammad, a man born in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia, in 570 A.D.

Muhammad is called the "seal of the prophets," the one to whom Allah revealed the last and most authoritative of his revelations, the Quran, the Muslim holy book. Muhammad began to receive the revelations that eventually made up the chapters of the Quran while wandering in the rocky hills outside Mecca. After receiving each of these audible revelations from the angel Gabriel, Muhammad would then return to the streets of Mecca and preach them to his compatriots.

His standard sermon had three points: the uniqueness of Allah; the need to care for the poor, orphaned and widowed; and the inevitability of a final judgment. After several years of reciting these revelations for the citizens of Mecca, Muhammad had only a handful of followers and was in danger of losing his life.

At this crisis point, a delegation from Medina, a town 200 miles northeast of Mecca, came to town looking for a leader. Medina was divided by rivalry between a fairly large Jewish population and an indigenous population that held to belief in tribal gods. Muhammad's message proved to be a bridge between the two. Muhammad saw himself as a legitimate prophet in the Jewish-Christian tradition; yet the name he gave to the God of Abraham and Jesus, Allah, was the name of an Arab tribal god.

After building a secure base in Medina, Muhammad began to incorporate the surrounding areas into his fiefdom, eventually incorporating all of Western Arabia, including Mecca. Many have seen Muhammad's political skills as important as his religious message.

Muhammad's message has often been summarized as five basic duties, sometimes called the Five Pillars:

* The Creed (Shahada): The basic requirement for calling oneself Muslim is to be able to say the creed with conviction of its truth: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."

* Prayer (Salat): An observant Muslim prays a standardized set of prayers five times a day: at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, dusk and evening. Friday noon is the traditional time for a communal service at the mosque, the Muslim building of worship. The prayer content is almost exclusively praise of Allah taken from various chapters of the Quran.

* Alms-giving (Zakat): Required alms-giving is a once per year "loan" to Allah of an amount of money based on one's net worth. However, Muslims are also encouraged to give regularly throughout the year to the mosque for the support of the poor in the community.

* Fasting (Sawm): During the lunar month of Ramadan, observant Muslims practice a daylight fast: no food, drink, smoking, nor sexual activity.

* Pilgrimage (Haj): Once during every Muslim's life, if he or she is physically and financially able, pilgrimage during the official three days of the Great Haj should be made to Mecca's holy sites.

The Five Pillars are the basic practices of Islam, and most of the theological thinking of Islam is readily apparent in the practices: the oneness of Allah, the praiseworthiness of Allah, the importance of the Prophet Muhammad, and the requirements of membership in both the local and the larger Islamic community.

Other key theological tenets include a belief in spiritual beings (both angels and more ambiguous spiritual beings called jinn), the centrality of the Quran and the importance of its purity in the Arabic language, a literal belief in heaven and hell, and the importance of establishing Shariah law in order to unite the secular and religious communities.

Shariah or the "Islamic Way," is the legal code of Islam and is derived from the teachings of the Quran and other Islamic religious texts. This last tenet -- the importance of Shariah law -- has shaped much of the interaction of modern Islam with the non-Islamic world. Muhammad himself was as much a political leader as he was a spiritual leader.

In the early years of Islam, from the 8th to the 19th centuries, this took the form of a number of waxing and waning dynasties. With the coming of the colonial powers -- Britain, France and the United States -- and the peace accords after World War I, this dynastic structure gave way to the nation-states of the 20th century.

Muhammad died without naming either a successor or establishing a process by which his successor should be named. As a result, two opinions developed among his followers regarding who should lead this increasingly powerful religious community. Some thought the leader should come from Muhammad's family. Others thought that the leader should be elected through a process of consultation and consensus. The second opinion carried the day, perhaps in part because Muhammad had no sons survive him.