The Five Pillars of Islam (arkān-al-Islām أركان الإسلام; also arkān ad-dīn أركان الدين "pillars of the religion") are five basic acts in Islam, considered obligatory by believers and are the foundation of Muslim life. These are summarized in the famous hadith of Gabriel.
The Quran presents them as a framework for worship and a sign of commitment to the faith. They make up Muslim life, prayer, concern for the needy, self purification and the pilgrimage. They are:
- the shahada (Islamic creed)
- daily prayers (salah)
- almsgiving (zakāt)
- fasting during the month of Ramadan (sawm)
- the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) at least once in a lifetime.
The minority Shia and majority Sunni both agree on the essential details for the performance of these acts, but the Shia do not refer to them by the same name (see Ancillaries of the Faith, for the Twelvers, and Seven pillars of Ismailism).
Famous quotes containing the words pillars and/or islam:
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
—Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)