The Five Pillars of Islam: Shahada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm and Hajj

Indeed, Muhammad conceived his religion at least in part as a response to what he characterized as the imperfections of the other two. For example, Jews "are declared [by Muhammad] to have closed their eyes to the confirmation of their own heritage when they rejected the message of Islam" (Campbell, 1978, p. 422). The Christians, meanwhile, adopted a form of polytheism "with their Trinitarian doctrines. . . misreading the words of their own prophet Jesus" (p. 422). Muhammad's analysis is articulated in the Qur'an:

Guide us to the straight Way, the Way of those on whom you have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (Such as the Christians). (Quran, Al-Fâtihah, v. 6-7)

The purpose of Islam is to acquiesce in the will of God. The meaning of the word Islam is "surrender" or "submission," and it is an idea to which Islamic texts con

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in Islamic countries (Ruthven, p. 143). A final centrality of Islam is the sharia, which is Islamic law. Sharia's role in the modern period is complex because some traditionally Islamic countries have adopted Western political forms. In theory, the sharia controls Islamic ideology, and as far as some Muslim activists are concerned Islam is a totality, an all-encompassing approach to life "as stipulated in the Quran, God's revelation, mirrored in the example of Muhammad and the nature of the first Muslim community-state, and embodied in the comprehensive nature of the Sharia, God's revealed law" (Esposito, 1999, p. 17). A legitimate question is whether there is the possibility that implementation of divine law carried out by mere mortals might fall short of perfection as interpretations are made over the centuries and as the onrush of experience forces traditional cultures to take account of the complications of life caused by unavoidable novelty. The answer to this difficulty in the view of fundamentalist interpretations appears to be that there is no difficulty, inasmuch as the sharia "was revealed by God to his prophet Muhammad as a guide for all time" Daniszewski (1997, p. A1). God's word being superior to man
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1776
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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