Islam: Experience of the Holy and Concept of Man

Abstract

Very rarely does the statement of its basic doctrines and demands truly define the individuality of a religion. It certainly does not in Islam. The particulars by which both believer and outsider will identify the Muslim faith are hardly of a kind to account for its striking distinctiveness. This distinctiveness is customarily circumscribed in terms of the so-called “pillars of the faith;” but to repeat for the thousand and first time that, to the Muslim, there is but one God whose Messenger is Muhammad, that five daily prayers are enjoined as are one month of fasting, an alms-tax and, when possible, the pilgrimage to the central sanctuary at Mecca, the Messenger's birth-place, will not convey much of the uniqueness and the unmistakability of Islam. Even when we realize that originality is not a value specific to the religious life—where innovation to be valid must always mean uncovery of, or recourse to, an eternal verity—the formulation of the “pillars” contains nothing that could have startled the world into which Islam was born long accustomed as it was to the ideas of monotheism and the prophetic messenger and the devotional practices of prayer, fasting and pilgrimage.