5 Pillars Of Islam By Carole Hillenbrand

In the Islamic faith, the community obtains their framework and foundation of faith through the Five Pillars of Islam. The Five Pillars of Islam include: shahada or the profession of faith, salat or prayer, zakat or almsgiving, sawm or fasting, and hajj or the pilgrimage. The Five Pillars of Islam are mandatory; therefore, every Muslim is required to perform the Five Pillars of Islam. According to the book Introduction to Islam by Carole Hillenbrand, “adhering to the pillars of the faith is a joy and a blessing to the faithful and it gives deep spiritual meaning to their lives” (89). If one were to take a deeper look into the second most important pillar, the salat or prayer, they would discover that there are two different kinds of prayer:

The muezzin’s call to prayer resounds across the Islamic world five times a day; the different times of day are as follows: salat al-Fajr or the dawn prayer, salat al-Duhur or the mid day prayer, salat al-Asr or the afternoon prayer, salat al-Maghrib or the sunset prayer, and salat al-Isha’a or the night prayer. Once the muezzin calls the community to prayer, people come to the mosque. On Fridays, people typically participate in a congregational prayer at the Jama Masjid; the Jama Masjid is the main mosque of a town or city. In most cities, there are also smaller mosques where an individual can go and have their own private devotions at any time of the

The community must face the qibla; this is the direction of the Ka‘ba which resides at the center of the Holy Mosque in Mecca. The number of prayer cycles in the prayer depends on the prayer being performed, but within each prayer cycle “Muslims perform several basic movements or stances—raising and extending the hands, standing, bowing, reclining back on their haunches, prostrating themselves and touching the forehead to the ground, and reverting to a seated position before repeating the prostration” (Hillenbrand, 97). In the prayer cycle, the sequence of the movements stated previously is called a rak‘a; according to Hillenbrand, “the prescribed movements made during ritual prayer epitomize the submission of Muslims to God” (92). While performing the sequence of movements during prayer, the individual will also recite various phrases and sets of prayers in Arabic depending on the stage of the