5 Pillars Made Plain
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Intro to Pillar 1: Shahada (Testimony of Faith)
3 stories. 3 different experiences of declaring faith.
Sh. Abdullah Oduro introduces the words that make up the Shahada of Islam and how they can change our lives.
This series will explain each of the 5 pillars of Islam by answering the questions "what", "who", "when", "where", and "why" for each pillar. Our goal is for a better understanding of the basics of Islam as we all pursue a closer relationship with Allah (swt).
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you all. I'm Abdullah Oduro and welcome. I want to share with you three stories. The first one is of a girl named Tracy. Tracy was in her car. She's on, has her hands on the steering wheel. She's, you know, moving back and forth. She's nervous. Tracy's on her way to her friend Fultima's house. When she opens the door to her friend Fultima's house, she goes to the living room and she sees her other three friends there. And they're all Muslim sisters. You see, Tracy is there for a special event. She's there to say some words that are going to change her life. When Tracy sits on the couch, Fultima asks her, are you ready? And Tracy says, yes, I'm ready. Fultima says, repeat after me. Now, when Fultima says, repeat after me, she's holding Tracy's hand tightly and Tracy's moving back and forth. The other friends are holding each other's hands and they're all nervous. Then Fultima says, Tracy says, and then she starts crying. Later in that evening, she was able to fulfill and say the whole statement. But Tracy knew at that moment that those words were much more than words. They meant much more to her because her friend Fultima and the other three girls were telling her about the Shahada. What about George? George was an individual that had a friend, a Muslim friend at work. And his Muslim friend, he always used to see go into the back office and bow and prostrate. And he knew that that bowing and prostrating was a means for him to be calm and collect at work. You see, they knew this Muslim guy to be a calm and collect person and they would seek advice
from him because he was the cool guy. So when George used to talk to him all the time, he realized that it was his faith that he was practicing, that he was praying twice at work and the rest of the three times outside of work. One time he was with them at the coffee shop and he said, you know what, what is that that you're practicing? Whereupon he told him that it was Islam and that he was a Muslim. And George said, you know, I want that. I see the way you carry yourself and I like it. So George wanted to become a Muslim. His friend told him, come to the mosque on Friday. They came to the mosque on Friday and the imam told him to come up. The imam said, repeat after me. George said, he started to stutter. Then later on in the shahada, when he started to pronounce the end portion of it, he said it gracefully. After that, as we know, all the congregants come up to give him a hug. One of them asked him, you were nervous in the beginning, but you said it gracefully at the end. Whereupon George replied, yes, I was nervous at the beginning, but I knew what these words meant and I was ready to change my life. And I knew these words would serve as a catalyst for that. Third story, what about Fultima and Ahmed? You see Fultima and Ahmed are what we call renewed Muslims. As Christianity, we call born again Christians. They were renewed Muslims. They were born Muslim. They said this shahada throughout their whole life, since they were toddlers, they've heard it in the masjid, they've heard it in the adhan, the call to prayer. But it was one lecture in college that when they heard the meaning of Islam, the meaning of the shahada is when they really realized why they were Muslim. And it was a wake up call for them, which served as a catalyst for their process of conviction. Many of you have heard these words. Many of you have just said these words, the shahada being ash hadu alla ilaha illallah,
ash hadu anna muhammad rasulullah. I bear witness that there's no one worthy of worship, that there's no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the last messenger of Allah. You said this in order to become a Muslim. This is what is called the shahada. This was what changed your life. When you said it, you started crying. When you said it, you became a brother. When you said it, so many people were elated in front of you. Some of them crying, many of them bum rushing you and coming to hug you and congratulating you and saying such statements as you're better than me. It's like you're a newborn baby. All of your sins are washed. This is the shahada. What have we done when we said these words? Realizing that these words will change our life. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make you of those that when you say these words understanding the meaning of that process of life and knowing that the shahada serves as a catalyst for that. Thank you.
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