Shahadah
(Testimony of Faith)
The first pillar of Islam is to believe
and declare the faith by saying the Shahadah (lit. 'witness'),
known as the Kalimah.
La
ilaha ila Allah; Muhammadur-rasul Allah. 'There is no god but
Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.'
The meaning is better understood in English as saying that there
is no deity worthy of worship throughout the creation, only
the Creator is worth of any worship.
Or as
we say: "Worship the Creator - Not His Creations."
This declaration
contains two parts. The first part refers to God Almighty, the
Creator of everything, the Lord of the Worlds; the second part
refers to the Messenger, Muhammad (pbuh) a prophet and a human
being, who received the revelation through the Archangel Gabriel,
and taught it to mankind.
By sincerely uttering the Shahadah the
Muslim acknowledges Allah as the sole Creator of all, and the
Supreme Authority over everything and everyone in the universe.
Consequently the Muslim closes his/her heart and mind to loyalty,
devotion and obedience to, trust in, reliance on, and worship
of anything or anyone other than Allah. This rejection is not
confined merely to pagan gods and goddesses of wood and stone
and created by human hands and imaginations; this rejection
must extend to all other conceptions, superstitions, ideologies,
ways of life, and authority figures that claim supreme devotion,
loyalty, trust, love, obedience or worship. This entails, for
example, the rejection of belief in such common things as astrology,
palm reading, good luck charms, fortune-telling and psychic
readings, in addition to praying at shrines or graves of "saints",
asking the dead souls to intercede for them with Allah. There
are no intercessors in Islam, nor any class of clergy as such;
a Muslim prays directly and exclusively to Allah.
Belief in the
prophethood of Muhammad (pbuh) entails belief in the guidance
brought by him and contained in his Sunnah (traditions of his
sayings and actions), and demands of the Muslim the intention
to follow his guidance faithfully. Muhammad (pbuh) was also
a human being, a man with feelings and emotions, who ate, drank
and slept, and was born and died, like other men. He had a pure
and upright nature, extraordinary righteousness, and an unwavering
faith in Allah and commitment to Islam, but he was not divine.
Muslims do not pray to him, not even as an intercessor, and
Muslims abhor the terms "Mohammedan" and "Mohammedanism".
