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WHAT IS ISLAM?
The largest Muslim charities, such as Islamic Relief, have become important international aid agencies. The fast of Ramadan is Islam's FOURTH PILLAR. Between first light and sundown, adult Muslims in good health abstain from food, drink, cigarettes, and sex. Vices, such as lying and backbiting, are regarded as particularly abhorrent during Ramadan, which is also a traditional time for charity and visiting the sick and the poor. The fast lasts for an entire lunar month of between 28 and 30 days, and ends with one of the religion's major festivals, Eid al-Fitr. The FINAL PILLAR is the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every believer who is physically and financially able is required to make it at least once. The rites begin and end at the Ka'aba, the square shrine built, as Muslims believe, by Abraham and his elder son Ishmael. However, the culminating moment unfolds eight miles away, where Muslims stand and pray near the Mount of Mercy, a desert place where the Prophet is believed to have preached. A spectacular annual assembly of several million people, the hajj is seen as a symbolic journey to God. But it is also thought to represent the equality of believers, and their sense of distinctive identity as a community. The hajj ends with the second of the great festivals, the Eid al-Adha, which last three days. These religious duties are fairly simple, but also fairly demanding, and it is far from clear how many Muslims observe them. In many villages, observance - at least in public - can appear to be total. In Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, the duties are enforced by law. In the cities of very secularised countries, such as Turkey, the percentage of who pray at the approved times is probably as low as 10 per cent. The Ramadan fast is more commonly observed than prayer, and although the hajj is undertaken only by the minority who can afford it, it is not unusual for quite secular individuals to make the journey to Mecca towards the end of their lives, in the hope that the pilgrimage will atone for past misdeeds. The meaning of the Five Pillars varies in the souls of different believers. For the mystically inclined, they are all methods of spiritual transformation. As the Koran says, "Remembering God is what makes hearts find peace". Recently, however, some Muslim thinkers have focused on the rites as symbols and guarantors of Muslim identity and unity. While the spiritual life is not denied, religion is used by the minority of believers who favour the radical agenda as a badge of Muslim difference against the West's global culture. Most believers regard that transformation with suspicion. For them, the Five Pillars have only one purpose, which is to help the notoriously absent-minded human race to remember its Maker - and they remind us that the word "Islam" means "surrender to God". -T. Winters
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The Life of the Prophet Mohammad How an honest merchant was transformed into The
Prophet at a time of political and religious upheaval A WELL known Muslim scholar, Sayyid Hussain Nasr, has observed that Islam is not based upon the personality of the Prophet Mohammed, but on God alone. He is, of course, right in the sense that the Koran, as the word of God, is the very foundation upon which Islam rests. This is expressed in the first part of the shahada, or witness to the faith: "There is no god but God and Mohammed is His Messenger." So, the Prophet is seen as the human vessel into which the divine revelation is poured. He is loved and venerated by Muslims, although in no manner to suggest that he is worshipped, for worship is to God alone. But the message and the messenger are, none the less, inseparable. Mohammed was born in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia, in about the year 570. Orphaned while still a child, he was brought up first, for a brief period, in his grandfather's household and then in his uncle's. His early experience in the chief Meccan activity, merchant trade, earned him a reputation for trustworthiness and honesty. These qualities attracted the attention of a wealthy widow, Khadija, who employed the young man in her trading enterprise. So dedicated and successful was he that the couple decided they should marry. For some time, Mohammed had been accustomed to withdraw to the nearby mountain of Hira and engage in a spiritual retreat. During one such retreat, he experienced a disturbing visitation from the angel Gabriel, who commanded him to recite. Reassured by his wife that he was not the victim of some malign spirit, Mohammed acknowledged a call to prophethood - the first major transformation in his life. The command to "Recite in the name of your Lord who created ... who, by the pen, taught man what he did not know..." (sura 96) was the first of a long series of revelations to be delivered over the next 22 years. The initial pagan reaction of amused tolerance turned to anger and rejection once the Prophet's message seemed to attack their pantheon of deities and their idols in the Meccan sanctuary of the Kabah. The Prophet's small band of loyal believers had "submitted" to the worship of the One God of mercy and compassion, and the call to protect those "deemed weak" or disadvantaged in society. Life was neither a matter of frivolity and self-aggrandisement, nor an end in itself - but rather a preparatory stage for the hereafter. Meccan opposition mounted against the Muslims, who faced boycott and ostracism in their own city; some were sent for safe refuge in Ethiopia. Then, personal tragedy struck Mohammed when both his wife Khadija and his uncle died within weeks of each other. Finally, when the Muslims began to sense their safety was seriously at risk, the Prophet took a decision which brought about the second major transformation in his prophetic career. To the north of Mecca lay the agricultural oasis of Yathrib.
The inhabitants had experienced recurrent civil strife among various tribes and, after lengthy negotiation with their representatives, the Prophet decided to send his small band of believers there. He himself followed shortly afterwards. This occurred in 622 and was known as the hegira or "emigration". Mohammed's followers from Mecca were known as "emigrants", and his local supporters in Yathrib were called his "helpers".
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