(Testimony of Faith)

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."

Declaration

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
(صلي الله عليه وسلم) a
prophet and a human being,
who
received the revelation
through the
Archangel Gabriel, and
taught it to
mankind.

Not Other Gods

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

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<td style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #f0f0f0; BORDER-LEFT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0.75pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; PADDING-LEFT: 0.75pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 0.75pt; HEIGHT: 560.25pt; BORDER-TOP: #f0f0f0; BORDER-RIGHT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-TOP: 0.75pt" vAlign=top>[center]Belief in the prophethood

Of

Muhammad (صلي الله عليه وسلم) 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 (صلي الله عليه وسلم)
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".
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