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Even though certain Muslims go about their religion differently than others, they all share the same general practices, known as the Five Pillars of Islam. Muslims must try their best to follow the Five Pillars of Islam, because they are considered to be God’s commandments. The first pillar of Islam is belief and witness, which is to believe and teach that God and Muhammad are united. “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God. The second pillar is the practice of continual prayers. Muslims perform certain rituals with water, face Mecca, and recite different prayers and passages from the Qu r’an, while bowing and kneeling five times a day. The third pillar is zakat, which means spiritual tithing and almsgiving. This means that at the end of every year, all Muslims have to donate at least two and a half percent of their income to need Muslims.
The purpose of this pillar is to purify the distribution of money and to help decrease the inequalities in wealth. The fourth pillar is fasting during the month of Ramadan. During the fasting period, Muslims are supposed to refrain from food, drink, sexual intercourse, and smoking during the whole month from dawn-to-sunset. The only people who are exempt from fasting are ones that have not reached puberty, sick, menstruating, or nursing children.
However, they are supposed to make these days up sometime in the year. Fasting is believed to burn up impurities within the body, giving you a “transparent soul to transcend, and clear mind to think and light body to move and act. The fifth and final pillar is Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims are expected to do this pilgrimage at least once in their life. This event is a series of religious rituals including Shahadah, sacrificing and animal, and throwing stones at the devil, represented by pillars.
I believe that the easiest pillars to abide by would be belief and witness and daily prayers. Daily prayers would not be hard because it’s what Muslims have been practicing basically since birth. Belief and witness goes hand in hand with daily prayers because it is simply the belief that “there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God. ” The most difficult pillars to fulfill would probably be fasting because it is difficult to give up certain things that we enjoy and do on a daily basis for whole month.