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The Five Pillars of Islam

 - The Shahadah
 - The Salat
 - The Zakat
 - The Sawn
 - The Hajj

The Sunni and the Shi'a

The Taliban Version of Islam

Islam’s Impact on Daily Life

Accommodating Islamic Customs

Whether Sunni or Shi'a, all Muslims recognize the five basic religious principles that must be observed in every day life.

Religion

Afghanistan is one of the most solidly Muslim countries in the world. The great majority of Afghans follow the mainstream branch of Islam, the Sunni tradition, although there is a Shi'a minority. Sunni Afghans are of the Hanafi school, the most liberal of the four schools of Sunni thought. For the most part, however, it is the folk level of Islam that is important in Afghanistan. The local religious leaders are not usually well instructed in Islam. They are mostly peasants who, in addition to their religious responsibilities, work part-time in other occupations, such as house builders.

The Five Pillars of Islam

Whether Sunni or Shi'a, all Muslims recognize five basic religious principles that must be observed in daily life. Often called the pillars of Islam, these principles are the Shahadah (profession of faith), the Salat (constancy in prayer), the Zakat (giving of alms), the Sawn (fasting), and the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).

The Shahadah

A Muslim is required, at least once in his or her life, to affirm out loud and sincerely, "There is no god but God, and Mohammad is his prophet."

The Salat

The most important of the five pillars is that Muslims must pray five times a day, either in a congregation or alone, at sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and nighttime. Muslims may pray anywhere that is clean, and many devout Muslims carry prayer rugs with them to ensure a clean spot. Traditionally, the call to prayer was announced by muezzins who chanted from the minarets of mosques at the appointed times each day. Today, most of the calls to prayer are recorded and broadcast. Before praying, Muslims must wash at least their hands, face, and feet.

During prayers, Muslims must face Mecca. Each prayer begins in a standing posture, during which verses from the Koran are recited – in certain prayers aloud, in others silently. The standing prayer is followed by a genuflection and two prostrations in which the worshipper kneels and touches his forehead to the floor.

On Fridays, the prayer just after noon is more elaborate, resembling more a Christian church service, with special prayers and a sermon that usually consists of a verse from the Koran in Arabic, followed by a discussion of that verse. The discussion can be moral, social, or political in nature.

The Zakat

Traditionally, the third pillar was an obligatory tax on food grains, cattle, and cash paid after one year's possession. Payment of zakat has evolved into a general requirement to help the poor and do other charitable acts, although some Muslim countries are seeking to reintroduce zakat as a tax.

The Sawn

The fourth pillar of faith is obligatory fasting during the month of Ramazan (the Afghan pronunciation of Ramadan), the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar. During Ramazan, a healthy adult must refrain from eating, drinking, and smoking from sunrise to sunset.

The Hajj

The final pillar is the pilgrimage to Mecca that every able-bodied Muslim must make once in a lifetime, assuming that the individual can afford it and can leave his or her family. After having made the pilgrimage, one gains the title Haji.

Afghans are mostly Hanafi Sunnis.

Islam is divided into two sects, the Sunni (or Sunnites) and the Shi'a (or Shi'ites). The split between the two occurred when an originally political movement claimed Ali, Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law and the fourth caliph, as Mohammed's legitimate successor. In time, this developed into a separate branch of Islam, the Shi'a, with theological, legal and devotional differences from the majority Sunni.

Sunnis constitute about 90% of the Muslims in the world. Iran is one of the few Islamic nations with a majority of Shi'a, Iraq being another. In other countries, including Afghanistan, there are pockets of Shi'a, many of whom have suffered discrimination and persecution for their beliefs. The Sunni-Shi'a split is frequently cited as the basis for political or military action. Shi'a Iran has expressed concern, for example, over the fate of the Shi'a groups in Taliban Afghanistan and consequently supported the anti-Taliban forces in the north.

The Sunnis are strictly orthodox in their obedience to the Koran and in the emphasis they place on following the deeds and utterances of the Prophet. Sunnis follow one of the four legal schools: the Maliki, Shafi, Hanafi and Hanbali, which differ on the relative importance given to the consensus about the views expressed in the hadith – the sayings of the prophet Mohammed – and the freedom of interpretation given to judges. The Hanafi school of Sunnism, to which most Afghans belong, is the most tolerant school concerning interpretation of the hadith. Founded in Baghdad in the eighth century, it became the dominant Sunni legal school under the Ottomans, and is now the most widespread in the Islamic world.

A dispute over succession to leadership of the Shi'a in 765 separated the two principal branches of that movement – the Imami Shi'a, who are now the dominant religious group in Iran and northern Iraq, and the Ismaili Shi'a, found mostly in India and led by the Agha Khan. Both of these sects are represented in Afghanistan. The more unorthodox Shi'a believe that the imam, a Muslim leader, must be a descendant of Ali and that he has exclusive authority in secular and religious matters. There are subgroups of Shi'a who differ among themselves as to the true line of imams.

The branch of Islam followed In Afghanistan corresponds fairly closely to ethnic group.

Ethnic Group		Branch of Islam
Pashtun		Hanafi Sunni, except the Turi who are Shi'a
Tajik		Hanafi Sunni; some are Ismaili Shi'a
Farsiwan		Imami Shi'a
Qizilbash		Imami Shi'a
Hazara		Imami or Ismaili Shi'a; some are Sunni
Aimaq		Hanafi Sunni
Moghul		Hanafi Sunni
Uzbek		Hanafi Sunni
Turkmen		Hanafi Sunni
Kirghiz		Hanafi Sunni
Other Muslim groups		Hanafi Sunni

The Taliban has been criticized for their lack of knowledge of Islamic law and
history.

The Taliban Version of Islam

Even when fairly liberal governments were in power in Afghanistan, their advances were kept in check by the conservative, solidly Islamic elements of the society. The Taliban imposed a particularly fanatical, anachronistic and rigid variation of Islam on the country, to which the conservative groups were sympathetic. Generally speaking, the Tajiks and northern peoples have been more liberal, while the Pashtuns to the south have been conservative.

Many of the Taliban's current leaders were educated in the refugee camps in Pakistan, where they had gone after the Soviet invasion. Among the welfare and education services that Pakistan provided in the camps were madrassahs, or religious schools, which received additional funding and scholarships from Saudi Arabia. These religious schools have their basis in the Deobandi tradition that originated to counteract the Western influences in British India. In Afghan refugee camps, the schools were often funded and run by inexperienced and semiliterate mullahs. The schools also appear to be heavily influenced by Wahhabism, a very conservative Islamic tradition prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism teaches that any practices acquired in Islam after about the 10th century are corrupt and must be eradicated. It is essentially a return to extreme simplicity of dress and personal habits, with various restrictions on women and the requirement that men wear beards. Islamic scholars have criticized the Taliban for their apparent lack of knowledge of Islamic law and history.  

Islam’s Impact on Daily Life

The impact of Islam on individuals and families depends on the degree of adherence to traditional rituals. The majority of Afghans adhere to Islamic principles of hygiene, modest behavior, and moral values. Islam expects modest dress and behavior, including chastity until marriage for girls and women. Nonetheless, people vary in their practice of their religion. Some strictly adhere to tradition, praying five times a day, maintaining halal food practices, and dressing to cover head, arms and legs. Other are more relaxed, praying to themselves when the spirit moves them rather than at specific times, and dress less conservatively.

Service providers’ understanding Islamic requirements can help make refugees feel secure in their new land.

Accommodating Islamic Customs

As an American service provider, your understanding of and respect for Islamic requirements and customs can help make refugees feel comfortable and secure in their new land, especially if they are resettling without family sponsorship. Here are some specific things you can do:

• Read the Koran and a description of Islam written for Westerners to get an understanding of the religion and its followers.
• If you have set up an apartment or house for a refugee family, identify the direction to Mecca (East) and mark the appropriate wall in the living area.
• Locate shops where refugees can buy rice in bulk and where they can find meat that has been butchered according to Muslim custom. You might show shoppers how to identify ingredients on packages of prepared meats, (e.g., pork, bacon, and pork products), so that they don't accidentally buy pork products.
• Locate the nearest mosque in your area. In some areas, a local church allows Muslims to borrow its facilities for Muslim services. Introduce yourself and the refugees to the person in charge.
• Be understanding if Afghan women want to cover their heads when going out in public. The dress code is of great importance to their cultural and religious identity. Years of social, religious, and cultural conditioning cannot be erased. In the workplace, the dress code should be accepted as long as the flowing chador is not a hazard to the wearer’s safety.
• Be aware of the Muslim calendar, especially the month of Ramadan when all Muslims fast.
• Provide home orientation so that women can maintain their strict standards of cleanliness. They will be unfamiliar with American houses, and in the absence of help from other Afghans, they should be shown how to use a toilet and other basics of Western plumbing; how to use a washer and dryer; how to handle garbage; and the countless other hows and whys of an American household.
• Equip the bathroom with a vase or pitcher with a narrow neck and indicate it can be filled at the sink. Muslims are required to wash themselves after using the toilet–toilets in Islamic countries invariably have a source of clean water attached–and are uncomfortable with the notion of toilet paper.

The Cultural Orientation Project--http://www.culturalorientation.net, for more information contact sanja@cal.org
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