This Religion Is a Science 145“speech,” and Muslim theologians were often pejoratively referred to
as ahl al-kalam, the “People of Talking”). What most concerned the
Ulama from the first days of the Islamic expansion, especially as the
Ummah became ever more widely dispersed and varied with regard to
language and culture, was not so much theological arguments about
the attributes of God (though, as we shall see, this would eventually
become vigorously debated among scholars), but rather the formaliza-
tion of specific ways to express faith through ritual. Their ultimate
objective was to form strict guidelines that would establish exactly
who was and who was not a Muslim. The result of their labors became
what is now commonly known as the Five Pillars of Islam.
The Five Pillars constitute the principal ritual activities of the
Muslim faith. Yet, as John Renard remarks, the Pillars are not meant
to “reduce the spirit and life of a complex global community to a clus-
ter of religious practices.” More than anything, the Five Pillars are
meant as a metaphor for Islam; they are a summary not just of what is
required to be a member of the Ummah, but also of what it means to
be a Muslim.
Contrary to perception, the Pillars are not oppressive obliga-
tions—quite the opposite. These are highly pragmatic rituals, in that
the believer is responsible only for those tasks that he or she is able to
perform. Nor are the Pillars mere perfunctory actions. The single
most important factor in the performance of any Muslim ritual is the
believer’s intention, which must be consciously proclaimed before the
ritual can begin. Ultimately, the Pillars are intended to be “a totality
of actions,” which, according to Mohamed A. Abu Ridah, are not
merely “verbal and bodily, but, above all, mental and moral, per-
formed according to certain conditions of conscious intention, of
external and internal purity, presence of mind, humility and submis-
siveness of the heart, creating within the soul of the believer a real life
of religious devotion and spirituality.”
With the exception of the main Pillar, the shahadah, or profession
of faith (which will be discussed last), these are all fundamentally com-
munal activities. In fact, the primary purpose of the Five Pillars is to
assist the believer in articulating, through actions, his or her member-
ship in the Muslim community. The ancient Kharijite ideal of the
Ummah as a charismatic and divinely inspired community through