What does it mean to be a Muslim ? A question that anyone outside our religion, or even our brothers and sisters lacking knowledge on this subject, may ask themselves. What does belonging to Islam represent and what does it imply to pronounce the testimony of faith in Allah ? These are all questions we will try to answer, by the Permission of Allah, to Him the Majesty and the Glory, in this article.
To be submitted to Allah
To be a Muslim implies recognizing Allah as one's Lord, one's Master and the Master of the entire Universe. This means that within ourselves, deeply and without compulsion, we recognize Allah in His Names and Attributes, and therefore that we learn to know them and understand them. It is incumbent upon all Muslims who bear witness by the tongue AND the heart to the oneness of Allah that they learn to know Him in order to better love Him, worship Him and follow Him in His Prescriptions, exhortations and recommendations.
The pursuit of religious knowledge is indeed an obligation for every Muslim man and woman, in order to have a pure and true knowledge of their Lord and in order to live a life in accordance with the Laws that Allah taught in His Word, the Holy Quran, to our beloved prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.
To recognize the Oneness of Allah in His Lordship (Rabb), His Divinity (Ilah), and His Names and Attributes (Asma'ihi wa sifatihi) is to be faithful to Him and to acknowledge being His servant. This implies knowing the pillars of faith.
To bear witness that Allah is One and that He is our Lord is to have a certain faith, a faith built upon 6 pillars. The Muslim therefore believes in :
- Allah and His Names and Attributes
- His Angels
- His revealed Books (that He revealed the Torah, the Gospel, the Zabur of David, and the Quran)
- His Prophets
- The Last Day
- The Divine Decree, be it good or bad
To have and be pleased with Islam as a religion
To be a Muslim means believing that Allah is the Creator of the Universe and that in His All-Encompassing Wisdom He knows what is best for us and has enjoined us to believe in His Laws and to apply them. Among them, there is the fact of practising one's religion as Allah and His Messenger have enjoined us to do. The Muslim must thus, in addition to believing, apply five sacred and obligatory rites to put his religion into practice. This means that to be a Muslim, every person attesting to the Oneness of Allah must practise the five pillars of Islam.
The pillars of Islam are five in number:
- To bear witness that there is no other God but Allah and that Muhammad is His Prophet and Messenger
- To practise the prayer
- To fast the month of Ramadan
- To give the obligatory alms (Zakat)
- And to go on pilgrimage to Mecca if he has the means
In short, he or she who has faith in Allah, to Him the Glory and the Majesty, a faith that respects the 6 pillars mentioned above, must worship Him as is due and conform to the pillars of Islam.
To recognize Him as the One
Islam is a monotheistic religion. The Muslim learns to know his Lord and to worship Him without ever associating anything with Him neither in the acts of worship nor in his way of conceiving the world, nor in his daily life. To associate nothing with Him represents a faith in One Unique Lord, who has no equal, in any way whatsoever. It is to recognize, among other things, that nothing must be :
- loved as much as Him
- feared besides Him
- venerated or admired as He is
- implored, beseeched apart from Him
Allah must have neither associate, nor equal, nor intermediary between the Muslim and Him.
Failing this, the Muslim falls into associationism. Whether it be involuntary, through ignorance, or voluntary and done consciously, whether to follow one's culture or through real conviction (may Allah preserve us from it!), any form of Shirk (associationism) makes the Muslim fear for his faith : in the first case he commits a grave sin and must repent of it, and in the second form, it makes the Muslim leave Islam completely. Shirk being one of the capital sins that Allah does not pardon.
To rely on Him alone
To trust Him totally and not to doubt His Capacity to come to the aid of the believer in all his affairs, not to doubt His Names and Attributes, is the attitude of the faithful Muslim. Whatever the domain in which he finds himself in need, the pursuit of the Pleasure of the Almighty passes through a deep trust in Him. This corresponds to developing the certainty that what He has granted us in this world is just towards us, faithful to what He decreed in His Book, since His Pen has dried and the destinies are sealed. All that can strike us, for good as for ill, was predestined for us, and it is incumbent upon us only to have certainty in Him, faith in our share on Earth, from the Most Just.
Having faith in this just distribution of the Lord, in His Supreme Will, gives us the strength to believe in our destiny, to accept it, and to rely on Him alone for all our affairs. Of course the Muslim lives his life by putting in place actions that will be for him causes of good, or causes of evil sometimes. Allah alone is the Knower of all things and He has given us free will to see how we would use it. To remain faithful on His straight Path or to lead a life in tortuousness and doubt?
S.67 V.2 He who created death and life to test you (and to know) which of you is best in deed, and He is the Almighty, the Forgiving.
Every Muslim has the duty to develop this recognition of Allah as the Only Provider, the Only One able to rescue him, the Only One deserving our trust in each of our affairs since He knows them better than we do.
Thus the Muslim :
- does not hasten to place his trust in the help of others but recognizes that goods and people are causes that Allah places at our disposal. By His Will we are helpers for one another.
- does not despair of obtaining a favourable outcome and refuses to seek it by humiliating himself before others since he recognizes that Allah alone has the ability to solve the worst problems from where the believer least expects it.
The following prophetic tradition perfectly illustrates this balance between our actions and the full trust in our Lord that the Muslim must keep within himself.
According to Anas ibn Malik, a man came to see the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and asked him whether he should leave his she-camel and go back into the mosque while trusting in Allah. The prophet said to him : "Tie it and trust in Allah."
Reported by Tirmidhi
To belong to the Muslim community of our prophet
To follow the Sunnah of our beloved prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is an integral part of the love and the reverential fear that must be devoted to Allah alone.
In this feeling of belonging to the Muslim community must reside the will to conform to the sayings and the acts of our prophet who enjoined the Muslims to help one another, just as our Lord did in the Holy Quran :
The Sunnah is also to consider oneself as a unique and important link in a single community.
According to Abu Musa Al-Ash'ari, may Allah be pleased with him, the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said :
The believers among themselves are like an edifice, they support one another. And the prophet interlaced his fingers to illustrate it. Reported by Bukhari and Muslim
Thus, the Muslim is, towards his brothers and sisters :
- gentle and respectful in his way of speaking and acting
- a good advisor who calls to good and forbids evil without humiliating
- a precious helping hand in case of need
- a source of sincere supplications and of teachings for one another
He who does not concern himself with the affairs of the Muslims is not one of them. Reported by Tabarani
Thus supporting one's community and striving to bring one's support to one's neighbour is part of a forsaken Sunnah that must be revived, each according to his means and his availability.
May Allah make of us humble Muslims worthy of His Love and His trust. May He allow us to Follow Him and worship Him as He has ordered us and taught us through His Holy Word and the Sunnah of our beloved prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.