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# The Five Pillars and the Six Articles of Faith
- URL: https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/five-pillars/
- Published: 2026-09-30T21:36:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T23:51:15.000Z
- Description: Where the five pillars and six articles of faith actually come from: one conversation in the mosque at Medina, set beside the Twelver roots and branches.
- Author: Mohammad Siddiqui
- Tags: Deen

New to the Qur'an? Start with [The Qur'an: What It Is, How It Came Down, and How It Was Kept](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/), then read [Muhammad ﷺ: A Life](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prophet-muhammad/). All articles: [Deen: Start Here](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/deen/).

Deen · Foundations

Most people who have heard anything about Islam have heard of the five pillars. Fewer know where the list comes from. It comes from a scene: a stranger in very white clothes walking into the mosque at Medina, sitting down knee to knee with the Prophet ﷺ, and asking him four questions while the Companions watched. This page starts with that scene and builds outwards from it.

It is meant as the front door to the practical and creedal posts on this site. Each pillar and each article of faith gets a short account here, the verse and the hadith it rests on, and a link to the fuller post. Twelver Shia Muslims organise the same material differently, into *uṣūl al-dīn* (the roots of the religion) and *furūʿ al-dīn* (its branches), and I set that arrangement beside the Sunni one rather than tucking it into a footnote. Arabic terms are explained the first time they appear, and there is a glossary at the end.

### The short version

1. The five pillars and the six articles of faith both come from one hadith, usually called the Hadith of Jibrīl (Gabriel), in which the angel, disguised as a traveller, asks the Prophet ﷺ what Islam is, what faith is, what excellence is, and when the Hour will come.
2. The pillars are the answer to the first question: the testimony of faith, the five daily prayers, zakat, the fast of Ramaḍān and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who can manage it.
3. The articles of faith are the answer to the second: belief in God, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and the divine decree, "its good and its evil".
4. The third answer, *iḥsān*, "to worship God as though you see Him", is the part that gets left off the posters, and it is arguably the point of the other two.
5. Twelver Shia scholarship files the same religion under five roots of belief (God's oneness, His justice, prophethood, the imamate and the resurrection) and ten branches of practice, which add khums, jihad, enjoining good, forbidding wrong, and loyalty and disavowal to the familiar acts of worship.
6. Neither list is a complete description of Islam. Both are teaching outlines, and the argument between them is less about what Muslims do than about where the imamate belongs.

### Contents

1. [A stranger in white](#jibril)
2. [Islām, īmān, iḥsān](#three-words)
3. [The five pillars](#pillars)
4. [The six articles of faith](#articles)
5. [Roots and branches: the Twelver arrangement](#usul-furu)
6. [Side by side](#side-by-side)
7. [Explore the lists](#explorer)
8. [The third answer](#ihsan)
9. [How the rest of the library hangs from this page](#library)
10. [Glossary](#glossary)
11. [Sources](#sources)

## A stranger in white

The best-known version of the story does not begin in Medina at all. It begins in Basra, a generation or two later, with an argument. Yaḥyā b. Yaʿmar, one of the Successors (the generation after the Companions), tells us that the first man to talk about *qadar*, the divine decree, in Basra was Maʿbad al-Juhanī. Maʿbad and his circle were saying that there is no decree, that things happen without God having determined them beforehand. Yaḥyā and a friend, Ḥumayd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, set out for the pilgrimage hoping to meet a Companion who could settle the matter, and they found ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, the son of the second caliph, in the mosque.[1](#src-1)

Ibn ʿUmar's answer was blunt. Tell them, he said, that I have nothing to do with them and they have nothing to do with me. Then, to show why, he told them a story his father ʿUmar had told him.

One day, ʿUmar said, while we were sitting with the Messenger of God ﷺ, a man came in whose clothes were extremely white and whose hair was extremely black. There was no sign of travel on him, and none of us knew him. He sat down facing the Prophet, rested his knees against his knees and put his hands on his thighs, and said: "Muhammad, tell me about Islam."

The Prophet answered: Islam is that you testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God, that you establish the prayer, pay the zakat, fast Ramaḍān, and make the pilgrimage to the House if you are able to find a way there. "You have spoken truly," the man said. ʿUmar remembered that they were surprised: a man asks a question and then tells the one he asked that he got it right.

"Tell me about faith (*īmān*)." That you believe in God, His angels, His books, His messengers and the Last Day, and that you believe in the decree, its good and its evil. "You have spoken truly."

"Tell me about *iḥsān*." That you worship God as though you see Him, and though you do not see Him, He sees you.

"Tell me about the Hour." The one being asked, the Prophet said, knows no more about it than the one asking. "Then tell me about its signs." That the slave-girl will give birth to her mistress, and that you will see barefoot, destitute shepherds competing with one another in tall buildings.

Then the man left. After some time the Prophet ﷺ asked ʿUmar whether he knew who the questioner had been. ʿUmar said God and His Messenger knew best. "That was Jibrīl," he said. "He came to teach you your religion."[1](#src-1)

That last sentence is why the hadith carries the weight it does. It presents itself as a summary of the religion delivered in the form of a lesson, with the angel of revelation playing the student so that the real students could listen. Al-Nawawī put it second in his *Forty Hadith*, straight after the hadith on intentions, and it has opened countless study circles since.[2](#src-2)

### The other telling

Al-Bukhārī has the same scene through a different Companion, Abū Hurayra, and it is worth reading the two side by side because they do not match word for word.[3](#src-3) In Abū Hurayra's version the answer on faith lists belief in God, His angels, the meeting with Him, His messengers, and the resurrection; it does not mention the books or the decree. The answer on Islam lists worshipping God alone without associating anything with Him, the prayer, the zakat and the fast. The pilgrimage is not there. And when the Prophet ﷺ comes to the Hour, he adds that it is one of five things only God knows, and recites the verse that names them: the Hour, the rain, what is in the wombs, what a soul will earn tomorrow, and where it will die.[3](#src-3)[4](#src-4)

None of this worried the classical scholars much, and I do not think it should worry a modern reader either. Two men remembered one conversation and repeated it to different people over many years; each transmission kept the substance and trimmed or expanded the details. The simplest reading, and the one I find most convincing, is that narrators did not always repeat every item on a list they assumed their hearers already knew. What is striking is how much the two agree on: the three questions, the order, the phrase about seeing God, the refusal to date the Hour, and the identification of the visitor as Jibrīl. It is also worth noticing that the "six articles" and "five pillars" as fixed lists owe a good deal to ʿUmar's version in Muslim, which is the one that became the standard teaching text.

### "Built on five"

The pillar image itself comes from a separate, shorter hadith. Ibn ʿUmar reported that the Prophet ﷺ said Islam is built on five: the testimony that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His Messenger, establishing the prayer, paying the zakat, the pilgrimage, and the fast of Ramaḍān.[5](#src-5) It is in both al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and al-Nawawī placed it immediately after the Hadith of Jibrīl as his third hadith.[6](#src-6)

Muslim's collection preserves a small exchange that shows how carefully people listened. In one telling a man repeating the list back puts the pilgrimage before the fast. Ibn ʿUmar stops him: no, the fast of Ramaḍān and then the pilgrimage, that is how I heard it from the Messenger of God.[7](#src-7) Yet another chain in the same chapter of Muslim, and al-Bukhārī's own wording, give the pilgrimage before the fast.[8](#src-8)[5](#src-5) Ibn ʿUmar's insistence tells us that some of the early listeners cared about the order; the variation between chains tells us the order was never treated as doctrine.

## Islām, īmān, iḥsān

The three words the visitor asks about are related, and in everyday Arabic they overlap. *Islām* means submission, handing oneself over. *Īmān* means faith, trust, security of heart; it shares a root with *amān*, safety. *Iḥsān* means doing something beautifully or well, and in the hadith it becomes the name for worship done with full attention.

The Qur'an itself makes the distinction between the first two in a verse about some Bedouin tribesmen who came to Medina declaring their faith. "˹Some of˺ the nomadic Arabs say, 'We believe.' Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ 'You have not believed. But say, "We have submitted," for faith has not yet entered your hearts …'"[9](#src-9)

قَالَتِ ٱلْأَعْرَابُ ءَامَنَّا ۖ قُل لَّمْ تُؤْمِنُوا۟ وَلَـٰكِن قُولُوٓا۟ أَسْلَمْنَا وَلَمَّا يَدْخُلِ ٱلْإِيمَـٰنُ فِى قُلُوبِكُمْ

˹Some of˺ the nomadic Arabs say, "We believe." Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ "You have not believed. But say, 'We have submitted,' for faith has not yet entered your hearts …"

Qur'an 49:14

So submission can be outward and faith inward, and a person can have the first before the second. That is the logic of the hadith's order: first the visible acts that anyone can see a Muslim doing, then the beliefs underneath them, then the quality of attention that is supposed to fill both. Elsewhere the Qur'an uses *islām* for the whole religion, "Allah's only Way is Islam", and Abraham, long before Muhammad ﷺ, is called *muslim* in the older, wider sense of one who submitted to God.[10](#src-10)[11](#src-11) The words stretch and contract with context. When all three appear together, as they do in the hadith, they name three layers; when one appears alone it usually carries the others with it.

That is also the first place where theologians part company. Whether "faith" includes action, whether it can grow and shrink, and whether a person who commits a grave sin is still a believer are questions on which the Ashʿarīs, Māturīdīs, Atharīs, Muʿtazilīs and Twelvers gave different answers. They are covered in the companion post on [belief in God, the prophets and the unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/).

## The five pillars

Encyclopaedias describe the pillars (*arkān al-islām*, the supports of Islam) as the basic acts every Muslim is expected to perform, and Britannica's entry makes the point that Shia Muslims regard every one of them as obligatory while more often teaching them under a different scheme, of which more below.[12](#src-12) What follows is a short account of each, with the texts behind it. Each has its own full post. All five bind a Muslim who has reached puberty and is of sound mind: the Prophet ﷺ said that the actions of three are not recorded, "a sleeper till he awakes, a boy till he reaches puberty, and a lunatic till he comes to reason", in a report al-Albānī graded ṣaḥīḥ.[84](#src-84) Beyond that, each pillar has conditions of its own (who owes zakat, who is excused the fast, who counts as able to make the pilgrimage), and the full posts set them out with the schools' differences.

### 1\. The testimony (shahāda)

The *shahāda* is a sentence: *ashhadu an lā ilāha illā-llāh, wa ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlu-llāh*, "I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God." Saying it sincerely is what makes someone a Muslim, and it is also woven through the day: it is in the call to prayer and in every sitting of the prayer itself.[13](#src-13)

Both halves are Qur'anic phrases. "Allah ˹Himself˺ is a Witness that there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him, and so are the angels and people of knowledge."[14](#src-14) "So, know ˹well, O Prophet,˺ that there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Allah."[15](#src-15) "Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah."[16](#src-16) The Qur'an also calls him "the seal of the prophets", which is why the second half of the testimony closes a door as well as opening one.[17](#src-17)

When the Prophet ﷺ sent Muʿādh b. Jabal to Yemen, he told him to begin with this: invite them to testify that there is no god but God and that I am His Messenger, and if they accept, then teach them the prayer, and then the zakat.[18](#src-18) The testimony is first on the list because everything else is built on it. It is also the pillar with the least to perform and the most to understand, which is why the creed post exists.

### 2\. The prayer (ṣalāh)

Five times a day, at dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset and nightfall, a Muslim stands facing Mecca and prays: a fixed sequence of standing, recitation, bowing, prostration and sitting, repeated in cycles.[19](#src-19) "Indeed, performing prayers is a duty on the believers at the appointed times," the Qur'an says, and it singles out "the middle prayer" for special care.[20](#src-20)[21](#src-21) When God first speaks to Moses, beside the fire he had seen in the valley, the instruction that follows the declaration of His oneness is "establish prayer for My remembrance".[22](#src-22) And it gives the prayer a moral purpose as well as a devotional one: "˹genuine˺ prayer should deter ˹one˺ from indecency and wickedness. The remembrance of Allah is ˹an˺ even greater ˹deterrent˺."[23](#src-23)

The Prophet ﷺ described the five prayers with an image his hearers in a hot, dusty town would have felt: if there were a river at your door and you bathed in it five times a day, would any dirt be left on you? That, he said, is how the five prayers wipe away sins.[24](#src-24) He also said something harder: that between a man and unbelief stands the abandoning of prayer.[25](#src-25) Jurists have argued since the early centuries over what follows from that sentence for someone who stops praying, and Ibn Rushd's comparison of the Sunni schools sets out the positions.[26](#src-26) The Ḥanbalī school took the sentence at its word: a Muslim who abandons prayer altogether, even out of laziness, has left Islam, a view Ibn Taymiyya also held.[78](#src-78) Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī read it as describing a grave sin rather than unbelief, so long as the person still accepts that prayer is a duty, though both allowed a judge to impose death as a fixed punishment (ḥadd), a reasoning Ibn Rushd himself thought weak. Abū Ḥanīfa, his school and the Ẓāhirīs held instead that the person is detained and disciplined until he prays, and is not executed; in the Jaʿfarī school, as Mughniyya summarises it, a judge disciplines him in stages.[26](#src-26)[80](#src-80)[77](#src-77) Ibn Rushd traces the disagreement to how the reports are read: Burayda's hadith in al-Tirmidhī, "the covenant between us and them is prayer, so whoever abandons it has disbelieved", taken literally or as a stern warning. Those who allowed execution also pointed to Qur'an 9:5, where repentance, prayer and zakat are the conditions for letting people go.[81](#src-81)[26](#src-26)[82](#src-82)[80](#src-80) All of them treat denying the duty itself as a different matter, and in the classical manuals the penalties are for a judge to apply, not for neighbours.[77](#src-77)

The schools also differ, in detail, on the times, on combining prayers, on what breaks a prayer and on the positions of the hands. Twelver Shia Muslims, for example, commonly pray the midday and afternoon prayers together, and the sunset and night prayers together, where most Sunnis keep them separate outside travel. Those details belong in the [prayer post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prayer/), which walks through a prayer step by step with the differences shown.

### 3\. The alms (zakāh)

*Zakāh*, usually written zakat in English, means both purification and growth. It is an annual payment from wealth above a threshold, and the Qur'an pairs it with prayer so often that the two read almost as one command: "establish prayer, pay alms-tax".[27](#src-27) "Take from their wealth ˹O Prophet˺ charity to purify and bless them."[28](#src-28)

Unlike voluntary charity (*ṣadaqa*), zakat has named recipients. The Qur'an lists eight: the poor, the needy, those who administer it, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, the freeing of captives, those in debt, the cause of God, and the stranded traveller.[29](#src-29) In the instruction to Muʿādh it is described in a phrase that has stuck: taken from their rich and returned to their poor.[18](#src-18)

What is zakatable, at what threshold and at what rate is where the schools part company. The Twelver jurist al-Sīstānī, for instance, lists nine things on which zakat is due (wheat, barley, dates, raisins, gold, silver, camels, cattle and sheep), with business wealth added as an obligatory precaution, a narrower base than the Sunni schools use.[30](#src-30) The [zakat post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/zakat/) works through the thresholds in Australian dollars, and the [halal super post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/halal-super-in-australia/) deals with zakat on superannuation.

### 4\. The fast (ṣawm)

"O believers! Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was for those before you, so perhaps you will become mindful ˹of Allah˺."[31](#src-31) The fast of Ramaḍān, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, means no food, drink or sexual relations from dawn until nightfall, every day of the month. The Qur'an draws the line itself: eat and drink until the white thread of dawn is distinct from the black thread, then complete the fast until the night.[32](#src-32) Britannica describes its purpose as cultivating self-restraint, piety and generosity, which is a fair summary of how Muslims themselves talk about it.[33](#src-33)

The same passage builds in the exemptions: the sick and the traveller make up the days later, and some may feed a poor person instead of fasting.[31](#src-31) That last permission was argued over from the start. Salama b. al-Akwaʿ remembered it as an early option open to everyone, cancelled by the verse that follows; Ibn ʿAbbās held that it was never cancelled and covers the very old, who feed a poor person for each day they cannot fast.[76](#src-76)[75](#src-75) The Prophet ﷺ promised that whoever fasts Ramaḍān "out of faith and in hope of reward" has his past sins forgiven.[34](#src-34) The [Ramadan post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/ramadan/) covers the rulings, and why Australian Muslims so often find themselves celebrating Eid on different days from their neighbours.

### 5\. The pilgrimage (ḥajj)

"Pilgrimage to this House is an obligation by Allah upon whoever is able among the people."[35](#src-35) The *ḥajj* takes place in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja and is due once in a lifetime from anyone physically and financially able to make it.[36](#src-36) Its rites go back, in Muslim understanding, to Abraham, who was told to "call ˹all˺ people to the pilgrimage. They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel from every distant path".[37](#src-37)

When the Prophet ﷺ announced that the pilgrimage had been made obligatory, a man asked, "Every year, Messenger of God?" He asked three times before the Prophet answered, and the answer was a lesson in not multiplying obligations by asking too many questions: once was enough.[38](#src-38) The reward promised is large: whoever makes the pilgrimage without obscenity or wrongdoing returns "as on the day his mother bore him".[39](#src-39) The [hajj post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/hajj/) walks through the rites day by day, with the lesser pilgrimage, *ʿumra*, that can be made at any time of year.[40](#src-40)

### What the pillars are not

It is easy to read a list of five and conclude that these are the whole of Muslim practice. They are not, and nobody who drew up the list thought so. They are the minimum structure: the parts without which, in the hadith's own image, the building does not stand. Honesty, family obligations, the rules of trade, the ethics of speech and much else sit on top of them. The Qur'an's own summaries of religion tend to join worship and conduct in a single breath. "… they were only commanded to worship Allah ˹alone˺ with sincere devotion to Him in all uprightness, establish prayer, and pay alms-tax. That is the upright Way."[41](#src-41)

## The six articles of faith

The six articles (*arkān al-īmān*) are the answer to the second question. Five of them appear together in the Qur'an. "The Messenger ˹firmly˺ believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers. They ˹all˺ believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, and His messengers. ˹They proclaim,˺ 'We make no distinction between any of His messengers.'"[42](#src-42) Another verse turns the list into a warning, adding the Last Day: whoever disbelieves in God, His angels, His books, His messengers and the Last Day "has clearly gone far astray".[43](#src-43) A third passage folds the same beliefs into a definition of righteousness that refuses to stop at ritual: righteousness is not turning your face east or west, but believing in God, the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the prophets, and then giving wealth to relatives, orphans, the needy and the traveller.[44](#src-44)

ءَامَنَ ٱلرَّسُولُ بِمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِ مِن رَّبِّهِۦ وَٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ ۚ كُلٌّ ءَامَنَ بِٱللَّهِ وَمَلَـٰٓئِكَتِهِۦ وَكُتُبِهِۦ وَرُسُلِهِۦ لَا نُفَرِّقُ بَيْنَ أَحَدٍ مِّن رُّسُلِهِۦ

The Messenger ˹firmly˺ believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and so do the believers. They ˹all˺ believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, and His messengers. ˹They proclaim,˺ "We make no distinction between any of His messengers."

Qur'an 2:285

The sixth, the decree, comes from the hadith. In ʿUmar's telling it is the item the whole story was told to defend, since Ibn ʿUmar recited the hadith precisely to answer the men in Basra who denied it.[1](#src-1)

### God

Belief in God comes first and governs everything else. Its shortest statement is the 112th chapter of the Qur'an, four lines that many Muslims learn before they can read: "He is Allah, One ˹and Indivisible˺; Allah, the Sustainer ˹needed by all˺. He has never had offspring, nor was He born. And there is none comparable to Him."[45](#src-45) Everything later theology says about God's names and attributes is, in one way or another, commentary on those four lines.

### The angels

Angels in the Qur'an are messengers and servants, "messengers with wings, two, three, or four".[46](#src-46) One hadith says they were created from light, as the jinn were from fire and Adam from what the Qur'an describes.[47](#src-47) They are not intermediaries to be prayed to (a prophet, the Qur'an says, "would never ask you to take angels and prophets as lords"),[83](#src-83) and they are not independent powers; they carry revelation, record deeds and carry out commands. Jibrīl, who is the questioner in the hadith, is the one Muslims know best.

### The books

Muslims believe that God sent scriptures before the Qur'an: the Torah to Moses, the Psalms to David, the Gospel to Jesus, and "the Scriptures of Abraham and Moses".[48](#src-48) Belief in them is belief that they were revealed, not a claim that every present text of them is exactly what was revealed. The Prophet ﷺ taught a careful middle position toward what Jews and Christians of his day reported from their books: do not believe them and do not disbelieve them, but say, we believe in God and what has been sent down to us.[49](#src-49) The Qur'an's own account of itself is in the [Qur'an post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/).

### The messengers

God has sent messengers, the Qur'an says, some whose stories it tells and some whose stories it does not.[50](#src-50) Twenty-five are named in it, from Adam to Muhammad ﷺ, and the [creed post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/) lists them with their references. The Prophet described his own place among them with the image of a beautiful house complete except for one brick in a corner: people walk round it admiring it and asking why that brick was not laid. "I am that brick," he said, "and I am the seal of the prophets."[51](#src-51)

### The Last Day

Faith in the Last Day is faith that this life ends in judgement: resurrection, a reckoning, and the Garden or the Fire. The Qur'an's most compressed statement of it is two verses: "So whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it."[52](#src-52) It is the article that turns the others into something with consequences, and it is the subject of the [afterlife post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/).

### The decree (qadar)

"Indeed, We have created everything, perfectly preordained."[53](#src-53) "No calamity ˹or blessing˺ occurs on earth or in yourselves without being ˹written˺ in a Record before We bring it into being."[54](#src-54) A hadith in Muslim adds that God recorded the measures of creation fifty thousand years before He created the heavens and the earth.[55](#src-55) Belief in the decree is belief that nothing happens outside God's knowledge and will. How that fits with human choice and responsibility is the oldest argument in Islamic theology, and the one that started this whole story in Basra. The creed post sets out the main answers side by side.

## Roots and branches: the Twelver arrangement

Twelver Shia children are usually taught the basics of the religion as a different pair of lists. The first has five items, the *uṣūl al-dīn*, roots of the religion: *tawḥīd* (God's oneness), *ʿadl* (His justice), *nubuwwa* (prophethood), *imāma* (the imamate) and *maʿād* (the return, or resurrection). The second has ten, the *furūʿ al-dīn*, branches of the religion: prayer, fasting, zakat, khums, ḥajj, jihad, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, *tawallī* (loyalty to God's friends) and *tabarrī* (disavowal of His enemies). Britannica's summary puts it as five beliefs and ten practices.[12](#src-12)

The two lists answer the same two questions as the Hadith of Jibrīl, what must I believe and what must I do, but they are cut differently.

### The roots

The five roots are a theological outline more than a quotation. The Twelver theologian Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ (d. 1954) lists them as tawḥīd, prophethood, imamate, justice and the day of resurrection, and he is careful about their status. Someone who believes in the other four, he writes, is a Muslim "in the general sense"; belief in the imamate is what makes a person a believer in the particular Shia sense.[56](#src-56) That distinction matters, because it means the imamate is not, in mainstream Twelver teaching, a test of whether someone is a Muslim at all.

Two of the roots are not on the Sunni list as separate items. *ʿAdl*, justice, is there because it was the dividing line in the early theological debates: the Twelvers, like the Muʿtazila before them, insisted that God is just in a sense human reason can recognise, and that He does not compel people to sin and then punish them for it. The Shaykh al-Ṣadūq (d. 991) put it simply: justice means that He requites a good act with good and an evil act with evil.[57](#src-57) The Qur'an says that God does not wrong anyone by an atom's weight, and that He "commands justice, grace \[*iḥsān*\] …".[58](#src-58)[59](#src-59)

*Imāma*, the imamate, is there because Twelvers believe the Prophet ﷺ was succeeded by twelve divinely appointed imams from his family, beginning with ʿAlī and ending with the Mahdī, who is in occultation. The verse on obeying "those in authority among you", and the verse that describes the believers' guardian as God, His Messenger and "fellow believers, who establish prayer and pay alms-tax with humility \[*wa-hum rākiʿūn*, literally 'while they bow'\]", are read in Twelver tafsir as pointing to them.[60](#src-60)[61](#src-61) Al-Muẓaffar's standard account of Imāmī belief gives the imamate a whole part of its own, alongside God's oneness and attributes, prophethood and the resurrection.[62](#src-62) How that belief came to divide the community is the subject of the [Sunni and Shia series](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/how-sunni-and-shia-came-to-be/).

The remaining roots overlap closely with the Sunni articles. Tawḥīd covers belief in God; prophethood covers the messengers and, with them, the books and the angels who brought them; maʿād covers the Last Day. The decree is treated within the discussion of God's justice, under the heading of *qaḍāʾ* and *qadar*.[62](#src-62)

There is one further difference in how the roots are held. The leading Twelver jurist al-Sīstānī opens his book of rulings by saying that a Muslim's belief in the roots of religion must rest on his own insight, and that he cannot follow anyone in them; *taqlīd*, following a qualified jurist, applies to the branches.[63](#src-63) Sunni theologians argued over the same point, some holding that faith taken purely on another's authority falls short and most accepting it from a believer who is certain.[79](#src-79) The Twelver rule is stated with unusual precision, and it explains why the two lists are kept apart: one is to be understood, the other to be followed.

### The branches

Four of the ten branches are the Sunni pillars minus the testimony: prayer, fasting, zakat and ḥajj. The testimony is not missing, it has moved: it is the content of the roots.

The other six are these.

**Khums**, "the fifth", comes from a verse about the spoils of war: a fifth belongs to God, the Messenger, his near kin, orphans, the needy and the traveller.[64](#src-64) Sunni jurists generally read this as a rule for war booty. Twelver jurists read the word *ghanimtum*, "what you gain", more widely, and al-Sīstānī's rulings list seven things on which khums is due, the first being profit from earnings, a fifth of what remains after the year's expenses for oneself and one's family.[65](#src-65) For a Twelver household it can be a larger annual obligation than zakat.

**Jihad**, struggle, is on the list in its sense of armed defence under legitimate authority; the Qur'an's first permission to fight was given "to those being fought, for they have been wronged".[66](#src-66) Sunni fiqh treats it at length too, but not as a pillar.

**Enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong** (*al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-l-nahy ʿan al-munkar*) are counted as two branches. The Qur'an describes the believers, men and women, as allies who "encourage good and forbid evil, establish prayer and pay alms-tax".[67](#src-67)[68](#src-68)

**Tawallī** and **tabarrī**, loyalty and disavowal, round off the list. The first is love of God, His Prophet and the Prophet's family, often tied to the verse in which the Prophet is told to say "I do not ask you for a reward for this ˹message˺, only honour for ˹our˺ kinship" \[*al-mawadda fī l-qurbā*\].[69](#src-69) The second is dissociation from those who oppose them, modelled on Abraham's declaration to his people, "We totally dissociate ourselves from you and ˹shun˺ whatever ˹idols˺ you worship besides Allah".[70](#src-70) Tabarrī is the item on the list most often misunderstood by outsiders, and most often argued about within Shia communities themselves.

### "Built on five", Shia version

The Sunni pillars hadith has a Twelver counterpart that makes the difference in emphasis very plain. In al-Kulaynī's *al-Kāfī*, the Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir is reported as saying that Islam is built on five: prayer, zakat, fasting, ḥajj and *al-wilāya*, loyalty to the imams.[71](#src-71) The report adds that "nothing was called to as emphatically as al-wilāya". Al-Majlisī, the seventeenth-century commentator, graded that chain weak, but another report in the same chapter carries the same words, with the addition that people accepted the other four and left this one, and he graded it reliable.[72](#src-72) Where the Sunni hadith opens with the testimony, the Shia one closes with loyalty to the imams.

The Ismāʿīlīs, the other large branch of Shiʿism, have a third list. Their classical law book, the *Daʿāʾim al-Islām* of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 974), says Islam was founded on seven pillars: devotion to the imam, ritual purity, prayer, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage and jihad.[73](#src-73) It is a reminder that "the five pillars" is one teaching outline among several, even if it is by far the best known.

## Side by side

This table lines the two arrangements up. It is a map for readers, not a claim that the items are identical: the Twelver root of justice, for example, carries a whole theology that "belief in the decree" does not.

| Question                           | Sunni teaching (Hadith of Jibrīl)                                                             | Twelver teaching (uṣūl and furūʿ)                                                                            |
| ---------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| What must I believe?               | Six articles: God, angels, books, messengers, the Last Day, the decree                        | Five roots: tawḥīd, ʿadl (justice), nubuwwa (prophethood), imāma (imamate), maʿād (resurrection)             |
| Where is the testimony of faith?   | First pillar                                                                                  | Its content is the roots; not counted as a branch                                                            |
| Where is the decree?               | Sixth article                                                                                 | Discussed under God's justice as qaḍāʾ and qadar                                                             |
| Where are angels and books?        | Separate articles                                                                             | Included within prophethood                                                                                  |
| Is the imamate a matter of belief? | No; leadership is a question of law and politics                                              | Yes; a root, though its absence does not put someone outside Islam in the general sense                      |
| What must I do?                    | Five pillars: testimony, prayer, zakat, fasting, pilgrimage                                   | Ten branches: prayer, fasting, zakat, khums, ḥajj, jihad, enjoining good, forbidding wrong, tawallī, tabarrī |
| Can I follow a scholar in these?   | In law, yes; in belief, debated, with most accepting a firm belief held on trust[79](#src-79) | Roots by one's own insight; branches by following a qualified jurist                                         |

## Explore the lists

Every item below opens to show its key verse, a hadith, and where to read more on this site. Use the buttons to show the Sunni lists, the Twelver lists, or both.

Both Sunni lists Twelver lists Open all 

### The five pillars

1 Shahāda الشهادة the testimony of faith 

**Qur'an:** "So, know ˹well, O Prophet,˺ that there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Allah" (47:19); "Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah" (48:29).

**Hadith:** Muʿādh is told to begin with the testimony before prayer and zakat (al-Bukhārī 1395).

**Read more:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

2 Ṣalāh الصلاة the five daily prayers 

**Qur'an:** "performing prayers is a duty on the believers at the appointed times" (4:103).

**Hadith:** the river at the door, bathed in five times a day (al-Bukhārī 528).

**Read more:** [Prayer (ṣalāh): How and Why](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prayer/)

3 Zakāh الزكاة the annual alms 

**Qur'an:** the eight categories of recipients (9:60).

**Hadith:** "taken from their rich and returned to their poor" (al-Bukhārī 1395).

**Read more:** [Zakat in Practice](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/zakat/)

4 Ṣawm الصوم the fast of Ramaḍān 

**Qur'an:** "Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was for those before you" (2:183).

**Hadith:** fasting "out of faith and in hope of reward" (al-Bukhārī 1901).

**Read more:** [Ramadan and Fasting in Australia](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/ramadan/)

5 Ḥajj الحج the pilgrimage, once if able 

**Qur'an:** "an obligation by Allah upon whoever is able among the people" (3:97).

**Hadith:** "Every year?" asked three times (Muslim 1337).

**Read more:** [Hajj and ʿUmra](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/hajj/)

### The six articles of faith

1 God الله One, with none comparable 

**Qur'an:** sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112).

**Hadith:** the Hadith of Jibrīl (Muslim 8a).

**Read more:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

2 Angels الملائكة messengers and servants 

**Qur'an:** "messengers with wings, two, three, or four" (35:1).

**Hadith:** created from light (Muslim 2996).

**Read more:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

3 Books الكتب Torah, Psalms, Gospel, Qur'an 

**Qur'an:** "the Scriptures of Abraham and Moses" (87:19).

**Hadith:** "do not believe them and do not disbelieve them" (al-Bukhārī 4485).

**Read more:** [The Qur'an](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-quran/)

4 Messengers الرسل 25 named, many unnamed 

**Qur'an:** messengers named and unnamed (4:164).

**Hadith:** the house with one brick missing (al-Bukhārī 3535).

**Read more:** [the 25 named prophets](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

5 The Last Day اليوم الآخر resurrection and judgement 

**Qur'an:** "an atom's weight of good" (99:7–8).

**Hadith:** "the meeting with Him and the resurrection" (al-Bukhārī 50).

**Read more:** [Death, the Grave and the Afterlife](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/)

6 The decree القدر its good and its evil 

**Qur'an:** "We have created everything, perfectly preordained" (54:49).

**Hadith:** the measures recorded before the heavens and earth (Muslim 2653b).

**Read more:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

### The five roots (uṣūl al-dīn)

1 Tawḥīd التوحيد God's oneness 

**Qur'an:** sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112).

**Shia source:** al-Muẓaffar, *The Faith of the Imāmiyyah*, part 1.

**Read more:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

2 ʿAdl العدل God's justice 

**Qur'an:** God wrongs no one an atom's weight (4:40).

**Shia source:** "He requites a good act with a good act" (al-Ṣadūq, *al-Iʿtiqādāt*).

**Read more:** [the qadar debate in the creed post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/)

3 Nubuwwa النبوة prophethood 

**Qur'an:** "the seal of the prophets" (33:40).

**Hadith:** the house with one brick missing (al-Bukhārī 3535).

**Read more:** [Muhammad ﷺ: A Life](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prophet-muhammad/)

4 Imāma الإمامة the twelve imams 

**Qur'an:** "those in authority among you" (4:59); 5:55, as read in Twelver tafsir.

**Shia hadith:** Islam built on five, closing with al-wilāya (*al-Kāfī* 2:13:3).

**Read more:** [How Sunni and Shia Came to Be](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/how-sunni-and-shia-came-to-be/)

5 Maʿād المعاد the return 

**Qur'an:** "The Trumpet will be blown ˹a second time˺, then (behold!) they will rush from the graves to their Lord" (36:51).[74](#src-74)

**Shia source:** al-Muẓaffar, part 5, on the resurrection.

**Read more:** [Death, the Grave and the Afterlife](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/)

### The ten branches (furūʿ al-dīn)

1 Ṣalāh prayer

As the second pillar above. [Prayer post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prayer/)

2 Ṣawm fasting

As the fourth pillar above. [Ramadan post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/ramadan/)

3 Zakāh alms

Due on nine named things, with business wealth as an obligatory precaution, in al-Sīstānī's rulings (issue 1861). [Zakat post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/zakat/)

4 Khums الخمس the fifth

**Qur'an:** "one-fifth is for Allah and the Messenger, his close relatives …" (8:41).

**Ruling:** a fifth of the year's surplus earnings, among seven categories (al-Sīstānī, issues 1760–1761).

**Read more:** [The House and the Schools](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/the-house-and-the-schools/)

5 Ḥajj pilgrimage

As the fifth pillar above. [Hajj post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/hajj/)

6 Jihād الجهاد struggle

**Qur'an:** permission given "to those being fought, for they have been wronged" (22:39).

7 Al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf enjoining the good

**Qur'an:** "Let there be a group among you who call ˹others˺ to goodness, encourage what is good …" (3:104).

8 Al-nahy ʿan al-munkar forbidding the wrong

**Qur'an:** the believers, men and women, "forbid evil" (9:71).

9 Tawallī التولي loyalty

**Qur'an:** "I do not ask you for a reward for this ˹message˺, only honour for ˹our˺ kinship" \[*al-mawadda fī l-qurbā*\] (42:23).

10 Tabarrī التبري disavowal

**Qur'an:** Abraham's "We totally dissociate ourselves from you and ˹shun˺ whatever ˹idols˺ you worship" (60:4).

## The third answer

The pillars and articles get the posters and the children's colouring books. The third answer in the hadith gets the least attention and is, I think, the one the other two exist to serve. "That you worship God as though you see Him, and though you do not see Him, He sees you."[1](#src-1)

The sentence has two halves, and they describe two states. The first is the worshipper so absorbed that God is, for him, as present as anything he could see. The second is a fallback for the rest of us: if you cannot manage that, at least remember that you are seen. Both turn outward acts into something inward. A prayer performed with the right movements and the mind elsewhere is still a prayer in law; the hadith makes it clear that law is not the whole of what is being asked.

The Qur'an uses the same word throughout. Allah "commands justice, grace \[*iḥsān*\] …", in Khattab's rendering.[59](#src-59) It is also why the later traditions of spiritual discipline, including those gathered under the name of Sufism, often claimed the third answer as their charter, just as jurists took the first and theologians the second. The [Sufism post](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sufism/) takes up how far that claim holds and who has disputed it.

The hadith ends with the Hour and its signs, and then with a sentence that turns all of it back on the listeners: he came to teach you your religion.[1](#src-1) What is being taught is a sequence. First the acts, then the beliefs that give the acts their meaning, then the attention that makes both sincere, and last, a reminder that the whole of it has a deadline that no one, not even the Prophet ﷺ, can name.[3](#src-3)[4](#src-4)

## How the rest of the library hangs from this page

The Deen section of this site grew out of particular questions: the Mawlid, riba, a disputed night in Shaʿbān, how hadith are graded. This page and its siblings fill in the ground those posts assumed. If you are starting from nothing, the [Start Here page](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/deen/) suggests an order. Otherwise, here is where each branch of the hadith leads.

- **The testimony and the articles of faith:** [Belief in God, the Prophets and the Unseen](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/creed/), with the Ashʿarī, Māturīdī, Atharī and Twelver positions side by side.
- **Prayer:** [Prayer (ṣalāh): How and Why](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/prayer/).
- **Zakat:** [Zakat in Practice](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/zakat/).
- **Fasting:** [Ramadan and Fasting in Australia](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/ramadan/).
- **Pilgrimage:** [Hajj and ʿUmra](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/hajj/).
- **The Last Day:** [Death, the Grave and the Afterlife](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/afterlife/).
- **The year the pillars are lived in:** [The Islamic Calendar and Its Sacred Days](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/islamic-calendar/).
- **Everyday practice beyond the pillars:** [The Sunna in Daily Life](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sunna-in-daily-life/) and [Halal Food in Australia](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/halal-food-australia/).
- **Contested ground:** [Women in Islam: Texts and Interpretations](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/women-in-islam/) and [Sufism: Origins, Orders and Critiques](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sufism/).
- **How we know what the Prophet ﷺ said:** [How a Hadith Is Judged](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/how-a-hadith-is-judged/) and [The Hadith Collections](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/hadith-collections/).
- **Why the lists differ:** [Sunni and Shia](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/sunni-and-shia/) and [Following a Madhhab](https://www.mohammadsiddiqui.com/deen/following-a-madhhab/).

## Glossary

arkān al-islām

"The supports of Islam": the five pillars.

arkān al-īmān

"The supports of faith": the six articles.

ʿadl

Justice; in Twelver and Muʿtazilī theology, God's justice as a root of belief.

furūʿ al-dīn

"Branches of the religion": in Twelver teaching, the ten obligatory practices.

ḥajj

The pilgrimage to Mecca in the month of Dhū al-Ḥijja, due once in a lifetime from those able.

iḥsān

Excellence; in the hadith, worshipping God as though you see Him.

imāma

The imamate; in Twelver belief, leadership of the community by twelve imams from the Prophet's family.

īmān

Faith; inward belief and trust.

islām

Submission to God; the name of the religion.

Jibrīl

Gabriel, the angel of revelation.

khums

"The fifth": in Twelver law, an annual fifth of surplus earnings and certain other gains.

maʿād

The return: resurrection and judgement.

nubuwwa

Prophethood.

qadar

The divine decree or measure; belief that nothing happens outside God's knowledge and will.

ṣadaqa

Voluntary charity, as distinct from zakat.

ṣalāh

The ritual prayer, five times daily.

ṣawm

Fasting, above all the fast of Ramaḍān.

shahāda

The testimony of faith.

tabarrī / tawallī

Disavowal of God's enemies / loyalty to His friends: the last two Twelver branches.

taqlīd

Following a qualified jurist in matters of law.

tawḥīd

God's oneness, and the affirmation of it.

uṣūl al-dīn

"Roots of the religion": in Twelver teaching, the five fundamentals of belief.

wilāya

Loyalty, guardianship; in Shia usage, allegiance to the imams.

zakāh

The annual obligatory alms, paid on wealth above a threshold to eight named categories.

This is a research article, not a fatwa. It reports what the texts say and how the main schools have organised them. For guidance on your own belief or practice, please ask a qualified scholar you trust.

**Spotted a mistake, or know a better source?** I check and correct these pages when readers point things out. Please email [mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com](mailto:mohammad.siddiqui@icloud.com?subject=Correction%3A%20The%20Five%20Pillars%20and%20the%20Six%20Articles%20of%20Faith) with the passage, what you think is wrong, and your source (Qur'an reference, hadith with collection and number, or a book with page).

## Sources

Qur'an references link to quran.com, where you can compare several translations; Qur'an quotations are in Mustafa Khattab's translation, *The Clear Quran*, exactly as shown on quran.com, except that his dashes are given here as commas or brackets; words in ˹ ˺ are Khattab's own clarifying additions, and Arabic terms in square brackets are mine, added where the English word is part of what the post discusses. Shortened quotations are marked with an ellipsis. Paraphrases without quotation marks are my own. Hadith references link to sunnah.com. Reports in al-Bukhārī's and Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ are accepted as authentic by Sunni scholarship and sunnah.com gives no separate grade for them. Shia hadith link to Thaqalayn, with the grading al-Majlisī gave in his commentary *Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl*, as Thaqalayn shows it.

1. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 8a: the Hadith of Jibrīl as narrated by ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, with the story of Maʿbad al-Juhanī and the Qadariyya in Basra. [sunnah.com/muslim:8a](https://sunnah.com/muslim:8a?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
2. al-Nawawī, *al-Arbaʿūn* (Forty Hadith) no. 2: al-Nawawī's selection of the Hadith of Jibrīl, sourced to Muslim. [sunnah.com/nawawi40:2](https://sunnah.com/nawawi40:2?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
3. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 50: the same meeting as narrated by Abū Hurayra. [sunnah.com/bukhari:50](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:50?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
4. Qur'an 31:34 (the five things only God knows): [quran.com/31/34](https://quran.com/31/34?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
5. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 8: "Islam is based on five". [sunnah.com/bukhari:8](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:8?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
6. al-Nawawī, *al-Arbaʿūn* (Forty Hadith) no. 3: "Islam has been built on five". [sunnah.com/nawawi40:3](https://sunnah.com/nawawi40:3?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's and Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ collections, as al-Nawawī notes.
7. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 16a: Ibn ʿUmar corrects a man who put the pilgrimage before the fast. [sunnah.com/muslim:16a](https://sunnah.com/muslim:16a?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
8. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 16b: a wording that puts the pilgrimage before the fast. [sunnah.com/muslim:16b](https://sunnah.com/muslim:16b?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
9. Qur'an 49:14 ("But say, 'We have submitted'"): [quran.com/49/14](https://quran.com/49/14?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
10. Qur'an 3:19: [quran.com/3/19](https://quran.com/3/19?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
11. Qur'an 3:67 (Abraham "submitted in all uprightness"): [quran.com/3/67](https://quran.com/3/67?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
12. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (rev. Adam Zeidan), "Pillars of Islam", *Encyclopaedia Britannica*: [britannica.com/topic/Pillars-of-Islam](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pillars-of-Islam?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
13. "Shahādah", *Encyclopaedia Britannica*: [britannica.com/topic/shahadah](https://www.britannica.com/topic/shahadah?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
14. Qur'an 3:18: [quran.com/3/18](https://quran.com/3/18?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
15. Qur'an 47:19: [quran.com/47/19](https://quran.com/47/19?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
16. Qur'an 48:29: [quran.com/48/29](https://quran.com/48/29?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
17. Qur'an 33:40 (the seal of the prophets): [quran.com/33/40](https://quran.com/33/40?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
18. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1395: Muʿādh sent to Yemen: testimony, then prayer, then zakat. [sunnah.com/bukhari:1395](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:1395?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
19. "Ṣalāt", *Encyclopaedia Britannica*: [britannica.com/topic/salat](https://www.britannica.com/topic/salat?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
20. Qur'an 4:103 (prayer "a duty on the believers at the appointed times"): [quran.com/4/103](https://quran.com/4/103?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
21. Qur'an 2:238: [quran.com/2/238](https://quran.com/2/238?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
22. Qur'an 20:14 ("establish prayer for My remembrance"): [quran.com/20/14](https://quran.com/20/14?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
23. Qur'an 29:45: [quran.com/29/45](https://quran.com/29/45?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
24. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 528: the river at the door. [sunnah.com/bukhari:528](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:528?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
25. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 82b: "between a man and unbelief is abandoning prayer". [sunnah.com/muslim:82b](https://sunnah.com/muslim:82b?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
26. Ibn Rushd, *Bidāyat al-mujtahid*, tr. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee as *The Distinguished Jurist's Primer*, 2 vols (Reading: Garnet, 1994–96), book of prayer. A comparison of the Sunni schools' positions, question by question. On the one who abandons prayer: Arabic text (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 97–98 ([shamela.ws/book/21739/89](https://shamela.ws/book/21739/89?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)); Nyazee vol. 1, p. 98 (the translation compresses this passage; the Arabic is followed here).
27. Qur'an 2:43: [quran.com/2/43](https://quran.com/2/43?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
28. Qur'an 9:103: [quran.com/9/103](https://quran.com/9/103?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
29. Qur'an 9:60 (the eight categories of recipients): [quran.com/9/60](https://quran.com/9/60?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
30. al-Sīstānī, *Islamic Laws*, "Zakat", issue 1861: [al-islam.org/islamic-laws-sayyid-ali-hussaini-sistani/zakat-part-i-ii](https://al-islam.org/islamic-laws-sayyid-ali-hussaini-sistani/zakat-part-i-ii?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
31. Qur'an 2:183–185 (the fast of Ramaḍān and its exemptions): [quran.com/2/183-185](https://quran.com/2/183-185?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
32. Qur'an 2:187 (the limits of the fasting day): [quran.com/2/187](https://quran.com/2/187?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
33. "Ṣawm", *Encyclopaedia Britannica*: [britannica.com/topic/sawm](https://www.britannica.com/topic/sawm?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
34. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1901: fasting Ramaḍān "out of faith and in hope of reward". [sunnah.com/bukhari:1901](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:1901?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
35. Qur'an 3:97 (pilgrimage "upon whoever is able"): [quran.com/3/97](https://quran.com/3/97?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
36. "Hajj", *Encyclopaedia Britannica*: [britannica.com/topic/hajj](https://www.britannica.com/topic/hajj?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
37. Qur'an 22:27: [quran.com/22/27](https://quran.com/22/27?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
38. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1337: "every year, Messenger of God?". [sunnah.com/muslim:1337](https://sunnah.com/muslim:1337?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
39. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1521: returning from ḥajj "as if born anew". [sunnah.com/bukhari:1521](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:1521?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
40. Qur'an 2:196 ("Complete the pilgrimage and minor pilgrimage for Allah"): [quran.com/2/196](https://quran.com/2/196?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
41. Qur'an 98:5: [quran.com/98/5](https://quran.com/98/5?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
42. Qur'an 2:285: [quran.com/2/285](https://quran.com/2/285?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
43. Qur'an 4:136: [quran.com/4/136](https://quran.com/4/136?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
44. Qur'an 2:177: [quran.com/2/177](https://quran.com/2/177?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
45. Qur'an 112:1–4: [quran.com/112](https://quran.com/112?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
46. Qur'an 35:1 (angels as messengers with wings): [quran.com/35/1](https://quran.com/35/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
47. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2996: angels created from light. [sunnah.com/muslim:2996](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2996?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
48. Qur'an 87:18–19 (the Scriptures of Abraham and Moses): [quran.com/87/18-19](https://quran.com/87/18-19?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
49. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4485: "do not believe the People of the Scripture, nor disbelieve them". [sunnah.com/bukhari:4485](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4485?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
50. Qur'an 4:164 (messengers named and unnamed): [quran.com/4/164](https://quran.com/4/164?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
51. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 3535: the house with one brick missing. [sunnah.com/bukhari:3535](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3535?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
52. Qur'an 99:7–8: [quran.com/99/7-8](https://quran.com/99/7-8?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
53. Qur'an 54:49: [quran.com/54/49](https://quran.com/54/49?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
54. Qur'an 57:22: [quran.com/57/22](https://quran.com/57/22?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
55. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2653b: measures decreed fifty thousand years before the heavens and the earth. [sunnah.com/muslim:2653b](https://sunnah.com/muslim:2653b?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In Muslim's Ṣaḥīḥ.
56. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Kāshif al-Ghiṭāʾ, *The Shiʿa: Origin and Faith*, part 2, "The Basic Principles of Shiʿa Faith": [al-islam.org/shia-origin-and-faith-muhammad-husayn-kashif-al-ghita/part-2-basic-principles-shia-faith](https://al-islam.org/shia-origin-and-faith-muhammad-husayn-kashif-al-ghita/part-2-basic-principles-shia-faith?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
57. al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq, *A Shiʿite Creed* (al-Iʿtiqādāt), tr. Asaf A. A. Fyzee (WOFIS, 1982), "Concerning Justice": [al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-justice-al-adl](https://al-islam.org/shiite-creed-shaykh-saduq/concerning-justice-al-adl?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
58. Qur'an 4:40 (God wrongs no one an atom's weight): [quran.com/4/40](https://quran.com/4/40?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
59. Qur'an 16:90 ("Allah commands justice, grace \[iḥsān\] …"): [quran.com/16/90](https://quran.com/16/90?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
60. Qur'an 4:59 ("those in authority among you"): [quran.com/4/59](https://quran.com/4/59?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
61. Qur'an 5:55: [quran.com/5/55](https://quran.com/5/55?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
62. Muḥammad Riḍā al-Muẓaffar, *The Faith of the Imāmiyyah Shīʿah* (ʿAqāʾid al-Imāmiyya), tr. Badr Shahin (Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly): [al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiah-muhammad-ridha-al-muzaffar](https://al-islam.org/faith-imamiyyah-shiah-muhammad-ridha-al-muzaffar?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
63. Ayatollah al-Sayyid ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, *Islamic Laws*, "Following a Jurist (Taqlīd)", ruling 1: [sistani.org/english/book/48/2117](https://www.sistani.org/english/book/48/2117/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
64. Qur'an 8:41 (the fifth (khums)): [quran.com/8/41](https://quran.com/8/41?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
65. al-Sīstānī, *Islamic Laws*, "Khums", issues 1760–1761: [al-islam.org/islamic-laws-sayyid-ali-hussaini-sistani/khums](https://al-islam.org/islamic-laws-sayyid-ali-hussaini-sistani/khums?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
66. Qur'an 22:39–40 (the first permission to fight): [quran.com/22/39-40](https://quran.com/22/39-40?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
67. Qur'an 9:71: [quran.com/9/71](https://quran.com/9/71?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
68. Qur'an 3:104: [quran.com/3/104](https://quran.com/3/104?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
69. Qur'an 42:23 ("only honour for ˹our˺ kinship", *al-mawadda fī l-qurbā*): [quran.com/42/23](https://quran.com/42/23?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
70. Qur'an 60:4 (Abraham's disavowal): [quran.com/60/4](https://quran.com/60/4?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
71. al-Kulaynī, *al-Kāfī*, vol. 2, Book of Belief and Disbelief, chapter 13, hadith 1: [thaqalayn.com/hadith/2/1/13/1](https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/2/1/13/1?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). From Imam al-Bāqir: Islam is built on five, prayer, zakat, fasting, ḥajj and al-wilāya. Graded "weak according to the well-known view" by al-Majlisī, as shown on Thaqalayn.
72. al-Kulaynī, *al-Kāfī*, vol. 2, Book of Belief and Disbelief, chapter 13, hadith 3: [thaqalayn.com/hadith/2/1/13/3](https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/2/1/13/3?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). The same five from Imam al-Bāqir, with the same line on al-wilāya, adding that people accepted the other four and left this one. Graded *muwaththaq ka-l-ṣaḥīḥ* (reliable, like authentic) by al-Majlisī, as shown on Thaqalayn.
73. Ismail K. Poonawala, "Ismaʿilism xi. Ismaʿili Jurisprudence", *Encyclopaedia Iranica*: [iranicaonline.org/articles/ismailism-xi-ismaili-jurisprudence](https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ismailism-xi-ismaili-jurisprudence/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
74. Qur'an 36:51: [quran.com/36/51](https://quran.com/36/51?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
75. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4505: Ibn ʿAbbās, the ransom verse (2:184) not abrogated; it applies to the very old who cannot fast. [sunnah.com/bukhari:4505](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4505?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
76. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4507: Salama b. al-Akwaʿ, the option of ransom was abrogated by the following verse. [sunnah.com/bukhari:4507](https://sunnah.com/bukhari:4507?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). In al-Bukhārī's Ṣaḥīḥ.
77. Muḥammad Jawād Mughniyya, *The Five Schools of Islamic Law* (al-Fiqh ʿalā al-madhāhib al-khamsa), "Salat", on one who does not pray (Shāfiʿī, Mālikī, Ḥanbalī, Ḥanafī and Imāmī positions), al-Islam.org: [al-islam.org/prayer-salat-according-five-islamic-schools-law-muhammad-jawad-mughniyya/salat](https://al-islam.org/prayer-salat-according-five-islamic-schools-law-muhammad-jawad-mughniyya/salat?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
78. *al-Mawsūʿa al-fiqhiyya* (Dorar al-Saniyya fiqh encyclopaedia), "Ḥukm tārik al-ṣalāt bi-l-kulliyya tahāwunan wa-kasalan", the Ḥanbalī position that it is unbelief, citing al-Mardāwī, *al-Inṣāf* 1/286, with Ibn Taymiyya among those who held it: [dorar.net/feqhia/682](https://dorar.net/feqhia/682?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) (Arabic).
79. Ikramul Hoque Miah (checked by Abdul Rahman Mangera and Zubair Patel), "Taqlid in Aqidah", FatwaCentre via IslamQA.org, 5 January 2022, citing al-Taftāzānī, *Sharḥ al-Maqāṣid*, on the theologians' debate over belief held by *taqlīd*: [islamqa.org/hanafi/fatwacentre/179133/taqlid-in-aqidah](https://islamqa.org/hanafi/fatwacentre/179133/taqlid-in-aqidah/?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com)
80. Ibn Qudāma, *al-Mughnī* (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1968), vol. 2, p. 329, "Bāb al-ḥukm fī-man taraka al-ṣalāt": the Ḥanbalī case, citing Qur'an 9:5; al-Zuhrī and Abū Ḥanīfa: beaten and imprisoned, not executed: [shamela.ws/book/8463/777](https://shamela.ws/book/8463/777?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com) (Arabic).
81. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 2621: Burayda, "the covenant between us and them is prayer, so whoever abandons it has disbelieved". [sunnah.com/tirmidhi:2621](https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:2621?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Al-Tirmidhī: ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ gharīb. Graded ṣaḥīḥ by Darussalam, as shown on sunnah.com.
82. Qur'an 9:5 ("if they repent, perform prayers, and pay alms-tax, then set them free"): [quran.com/9/5](https://quran.com/9/5?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com).
83. Qur'an 3:80 ("And he would never ask you to take angels and prophets as lords"): [quran.com/3/80](https://quran.com/3/80?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Translation quoted: Mustafa Khattab, *The Clear Quran*, as shown on quran.com.
84. Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4403: ʿAlī: the pen is lifted from three, the sleeper, the child until puberty and the insane until he recovers. [sunnah.com/abudawud:4403](https://sunnah.com/abudawud:4403?ref=mohammadsiddiqui.com). Graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī, as shown on sunnah.com.

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