Date Posted: Friday, August 01, 2003

THE SHAHADAH

The shahadah (witnessing) is the solemn recitation of the words, "There is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." These words may be recited alone or with the words, "Ashhadu anna" (I witness that), prefixed to them. They are the first words the Muslim newborn baby hears as the parents or attendants recite them upon birth; and they are the last words the Muslim hears in his hour of death. If they are capable, the dying recite the words to themselves; if incapable, they are recited by others for them. At burial, the dead are reminded by the attendants that God is their God, that there is no God but He, that Muhammad is the Prophet of God. Thus the life of the Muslim begins and ends with the shahadah.

Between life and death, the shahadah is recited by Muslims countless times. Some occasions for the recitation are official and public. In a court of law, before any testimony is given, the shahadah is recited to establish the Muslim faith of the person involved. No more may be required, as the shahadah is regarded by the Shari’a as sufficient evidence of the person's adherence to Islam. Not being a sacramental religion, Islam has no ritual of initiation. The only requirement is the solemn declaration of acquiescence to the essence of the faith, made by a conscious subject understanding the meaning of the terms recited. Other occasions for reciting the shahadah are personal and private. The liturgy of Islam prescribes that the words of the shahadah be the first words pronounced by the Muslim upon waking in the morning and the last before going to sleep; upon conclusion of every wudu' (ablution) or ghusl (bath); in every rak’ah (prayer unit) during qu'ud (sitting on one's legs) as part of the prayer recited at that stage of salat (worship). The Muslim who performs his five daily rites would thus have occasion to recite the shahadah fourteen times a day. The shahadah is also recited by Muslims non-liturgically, whenever the occasion calls for it. It is used as an opener in speeches and letters, prefaces and introductions, as well as intermittently in any conversation as a means of punctuation, exclamation, or an expression of surprise, bewilderment, or reassurance. In the Muslim's mind, the notable states of consciousness are all associated with the presence of God and the subject's awareness of that presence, and therefore the shahadah is a suitable accompaniment. In most Muslim homes, the shahadah is present in beautiful Arabic calligraphy in every room, and sometimes on every wall.

The meaning of the shahadah is affirmation of divine existence and unity, transcendence and absoluteness, presence and proximity of God. Its value is identical with that of tawhid, of which it is the expression. Its meaning also comprehends the affirmation of the prophethood of Muhammad and, consequently, acceptance of all that he conveyed as revelation from God. The shahadah therefore is the confession of faith. As we saw earlier, the Islamic confession of faith is not itself an "act of faith." Rather, it is a declaration of an intellectual-cognitive and intuitive-emotional fait accompli, namely, the conviction of the truth that God is indeed God and that Muhammad is indeed His Prophet. This conviction may be arrived at in different ways - sensory, empirical, rational, a priori, emotional, and intuitive - until one reaches a state of perfect certainty called yaqin; and the shahadah is an affirmation or proclamation that yaqin has been reached.

SALAT

Salat is the supreme act of worship in Islam. It is mistakenly referred to as "prayer." The latter is an act of adoration or worship possible in any shape, form, language, or condition. The child's petitional request for a toy is as much a "prayer" as the meditative act of the mystic saint. Per contra, salat may be performed only at certain times, in a prescribed way, under certain conditions. It is entered into five times a day, at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and an hour after sunset. At times other than these, the salat is a compensatory make-up exercise whose value is less than when it is recited at its proper time. Salat must be preceded by ablution, consisting of a solemn declaration of one's intention to perform it and of washing with clean water one's hands, mouth, nostrils, ears, face, neck, and head; one's arms to the elbows and feet to the ankles; and a recitation of the shahadah. Without ablution, there is no salat at all. Salat is always recited in Arabic. Recited in any other language, salat loses its liturgical status and becomes an invocational prayer. Salat consists of units (rak’at) of which the dawn salat has two; the noon, mid-afternoon, and night salat, four, and the sunset salat, three. The rak’ah or unit consists of recitation of Allahu Akbar (God is greater), of the opening surah of the Qur'an, and of praising and glorifying God and invoking His blessing upon the Prophet Muhammad in specific terms. The rak’ah also consists of genuflection and prostration performed in one and the same way by all Muslims. One salat a week, the noon salat of Friday, has to be performed in congregation. For transients and travelers, congregation is recommended but not obligatory. Any two or more worshippers constitute a group for salat purposes. Every group salat must be led by an imam (leader), whose movements the congregation follows without exception. The group must stand behind the imam in straight rows, foot-to-foot and shoulder-to-shoulder without discrimination between the worshippers. Once the salat is begun, it must be completed in all its parts, unless the worshipper loses consciousness or unless the state of sacral purity in which his ablution had placed him is undone. Salat or worship in Islam has but this one definite and specific form is assigned to it by revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. Any change in its form nullifies it.

Formal as it is, salat in Islam is a discipline imposed upon all Muslims. By subjecting the worshipper to it, Islam sought to discipline its adherents and keep them ever conscious of the presence of God. Salat punctuates the time and habituates the Muslim to a healthy rhythm of life. Through ablution in fresh water, salat acts as a refreshener and cleanser; and through the alternation of standing up, genuflection, prostration, and sitting down, it serves as an exercise for the body. Salat brings psychic satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. To empty the consciousness of its daily cares, to concentrate upon God and His presence and will, is an uplift of the self to the realm of the absolute and universal. From such an exercise, the worshipper emerges more ready to face life and its problems than before. The content of the salat, the ideas presented to the mind through the liturgical recitation, strengthen the self in its determination to will and do the good, to avoid evil, to fill the world with value. Finally, when performed in congregation, the packed straight lines readily suggest and exhort the Muslim to uphold egalitarianism, universalism, brotherhood, and concern for the others.

Salat made necessary the establishment of mosques (from masjid- place of worship) in Islamic towns and cities. Every city quarter has its mosque where the residents of the vicinity hold their congregational salat. Usually, mosques stand no farther away from one another than the distance that can be covered by the human voice. For it is the muezzin (mu'adhdhin - caller to the salat) that calls the worshippers in the vicinity to prepare and congregate for worship five times a day. In order to reach a larger distance, the call to salat is proclaimed from the highest place in the locality. This made necessary the attachment to the mosque of a mi'dhanah (a high tower from which the call to salat is made). In English this tower has been misnamed "minaret" (from the Arabic manarah lighthouse). The skyline of any Muslim city is punctuated with "minarets" of varying shapes and heights. Every town has its masjid jami' (congregational mosque), where the Jumu`ah (Friday noon worship by the totality of Muslims present in any locality) is performed.   More than any other institution, the salat has determined Islamic architecture and the character of Islamic cities.

SIYAM

Islam prescribes fasting during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar year. On each of the twenty-nine or thirty days of the month, Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoking, and sex from dawn to sunset. Before retiring, the Muslim solemnly commits himself to fast the following day and to observe total abstinence from all alimentation of the body, and from satisfaction of its sexual desires. At sunset, the fast is broken and the Muslim celebrates the victory achieved over self during the day by making the meal a ceremonial occasion for the whole family and sometimes for the neighborhood as well. Obviously, siyam changes the rhythm of daily life, spurring activity in the morning and night, and slowing it down in the afternoon. In Muslim towns, the proximity of dawn and the setting of the sun are announced by the beating of drums, chanting of songs, and the adhan (call to salat), or, in bigger towns and cities, by all these and the firing of cannon at central squares. In every congregation, Ramadan witnesses the public recitation of the whole Qur'an, in thirty equal parts, as supererogatory exercises of worship, salat al tarawih held after the night salat. During one night in the second half of Ramadan, which the Qur'an had called Laylat al Qadr ("the night of power") as commemoration of the advent of the first segment of the Qur’anic revelation, Muslims address their invocations and prayers to God, and rededicate their lives to His service and obedience with special determination and warmth. On every day of Ramadan, Muslims make a point of giving in charity, of doing good deeds, of bringing consolation and reconciliation to all around them, besides offering daily hospitality to the needy and the wayfarer. Before the end of the month, they distribute to the poor an amount of charity equivalent to a day's feeding of an adult person on behalf of each member or dependent in their households.

Muslims call Ramadan the blessed month, a month of mercy and compassion. Certainly, it is a month of self-purification and rededication to the cause; a month of commiseration with the poor and hungry, the majority of mankind. Above all, it is a month of self-mastery and discipline during which the most basic instincts and needs of the body are consistently denied. If they are sated at the end of the day or in the night, they are denied again the next dawn - a repetition that ideally fulfills the requirements of disciplining the human self, of mastering one's instincts and desires to the point of determining when and how they may be satisfied. Ramadan is for Muslims a month of reckoning with oneself, a unique month to take stock of one's moral and spiritual assets and liabilities. The end of the month is celebrated with an 'id or feast, which is to the month what the sunset meal is to the day of fasting. It is celebrated with a special salat consisting of two rak’at (sing. rak`ah), in which the whole community participates. Where weather permits, it is held in an open field to accommodate the thousands of worshippers who gather, clad in their new or best apparel, chanting the takbirat.

After salat al 'Id, Muslims exchange congratulations and good wishes, distribute presents to children and the poor, and treat one another to an elaborate feast. The zakat (tithe) of Ramadan comes appropriately at the end of the month to help the poor celebrate the 'id and bring about a change from their daily privation.

ZAKAT

Ramadan and the 'Id are not the only occasions at which Muslims contribute to their poor. Practically on every page of the Qur'an, and hence in almost any portion of the Qur'an they recite within or outside of their daily salat, they read that God commands them to give sadaqah (alms) to the poor and the needy. Sadaqah is formless; any amount given at any time in any circumstance of poverty or need is a commendable and meritorious act, the more so the purer the motive behind it. Islam teaches its adherents that the poor and deprived have a "title" to the wealth of the rich (Qur'an 70:24-25), and exhorts the rich incessantly to meet that obligation.

In addition to sadaqah, Islam has founded the institution of zakah for the purpose of giving charity and concern for the poor a permanent and definite establishment. Being formless and depending solely upon the good will of the donor, sadaqah could not be trusted to satisfy the needs of society fully, regularly, and permanently. The need is certainly permanent, for as long as humans are humans, endowed with differing capacities and motivations for economic action, there will be some who, whether deservedly or otherwise, are poor. Indeed, the majority of humankind belongs to this class. Abject as poverty may be (the Qur'an calls it "the promise of Satan"- 2:268), the human predicament is that it is, and most likely will continue to be, universal. To transform the elements of nature into sources of nutrition and comfort, of wisdom and beauty, efficiency and enjoyment, is the content of the divine amanah every human carries. So many humans will fail in achieving a satisfactory level of amanah and will consequently suffer poverty in their lives that to help them in their deprivation and misery is indeed built into the amanah itself and constitutes a fair part of the moral vocation. And nothing is more conducive to happiness in the recipient, and to self-discipline and transcendence in the donor, than the act of charity. Hence no morality could do without it. Religion may back up morality in this regard and all religions have done so. Islam went beyond other religions by institutionalizing charity in addition to giving its voluntary form (sadaqah) the greatest possible promotion.

Zakat consists of an annual contribution of 2-1/2 percent of one's appropriated wealth to public welfare. It is incumbent upon minors and adults, males and females, living or dead. After debts, zakat is deducted from the inheritance of any deceased Muslim. Although it can be more than 2-1/2 percent if the donor so wishes, it cannot be less. To cheat in its calculation is, under Islamic law, a punishable crime. "Appropriated wealth" excludes debts and liabilities; house and household effects (except jewelry) required for living; and land, buildings, and capital materials used in, or for, production. Zakat is due on the current year's income as well as on the accumulated incomes of the past if held by the same person who acquired them, and on all stocks in trade, including lands and buildings and capital goods if they are owned (not kept on credit) and stocked for trade, not production. Zakat is obligatory for all Muslims, whether permanent or transient residents of the Islamic state. Islamic law empowers and obliges the Islamic state to collect the zakat, and keep a distinct account of it, separate from the public funds of the state treasury. Zakat funds must be spent on the categories the Qur'an has specified; namely, the poor and the destitute, the wayfarer, the bankrupt, the needy converts, the captives, the collectors of zakat, and in the path of God. With the exception of the last, all these categories are specific, capable of strict definition. The last category is deliberately ambiguous to allow zakat funds to be used for the general welfare of the community. The Sunnah has allowed use of salat funds for education of the people, for public works, and for defense of Islam and the ummah.

The institution of zakat has offered numerous advantages to Muslims. Being a religious duty, it offers the donor the inner satisfaction of a duty accomplished. It induces a feeling of pleasure in giving up wealth by teaching that only those funds on which the due zakat has been paid are halal (legitimate) for appropriation or consumption. The very word zakat means "sweetening," and it implies that those funds on which no salat has been paid are "bitter." The funds on which zakat has been paid are promised to give satisfaction and reward in this world and the next; those on which no salat has been paid will bring suffering and punishment in this world and the certain fire of Hell. Economically, zakat has proven to be a tremendous stimulus to investment of income in productive enterprise, for the appropriated and not-invested capital would disappear in 2-1/2 percent annual zakat-levies in thirty years. Invested in production, it adds to society's wealth, creates jobs, and produces more than 2-1/2 percent zakat tax for appropriation by the owner. Moreover, zakat is a great promoter of wealth circulation, a prime objective of any healthy economy.

Under Islamic law, zakat is obligatory to Muslims alone. Non-Muslim citizens are exempt but have to pay a different kind of tax (the jizyah, an annual poll tax levied on the lay, adult, free, and capable males exclusively). The Islamic state collected the zakat under the Prophet. After his death, some Muslims resisted the collection. They were declared apostates and were fought by the majority until they acknowledged the legitimacy of the institution and paid the dues. The practice of enforceable collection of the zakat continued throughout the Umawi and early 'Abbasi - periods, but was abandoned later, as it was replaced by the usual direct and indirect taxes levied by the government. From then on, it became a voluntary institution upheld by local Muslim communities by its sheer moral power.