Testifying

Now in Level 1 we talked about the Shahada,

those words that mean

'There is no god except the One God, and Muhammad is God's Messenger'

It's what makes a muslim a muslim.

And do you know why it is called the shahada?

Because that's its name?

Well yes, it is. But the word 'Shahada' is an Arabic word that has a number of different meanings

and it's those meanings that are the reason

the word is used for the name of the Shahada.

Remember we said that lots of muslims point their finger when they say the Shahada,

like pointing at what they see?

One meaning of the word Shahada is 'to witness', which means to see something.

In a court of law, the people who are witnesses promise to tell the truth about what they have seen.

The other people in the court who didn't see anything depend on the witnesses

to work out the truth of the matter for themselves.

When muslims make Shahada they are telling everyone that God is True.

They know that they can't make other people believe it,

only God can make people believe, but they can act as witnesses,

and then they have done their duty.

But if God can make people believe,

why is it that they are left to work it out for themselves?

Well, if people were all made to see the Truth of God all the time,

they wouldn't really be people.

Angels are made knowing the Truth, and can never see anything else.

But people and Djinn are different.

It is being able to choose that makes them special,

and makes their lives so exciting.

It's like a puzzle

People love all different kinds of puzzles.

It's the way that they are made.

They will spend hours trying to get the answer to a puzzle,

to fit the pieces together,

or pick their way through a maze,

until it's done.

It's great fun.

But once they have worked out the way to solve the problem, that puzzle is never the same kind of fun again.

It stops being a puzzle and loses its interest.

For humans, life is meant to be a puzzle.

It's full of problems to solve,

and you're never quite sure if you are heading in the right direction

to get where you want to go.

But life is not like ordinary puzzles,

because you never get to find out all the answers until it's over.

Until then, you can only guess whether you got it all right.

Muslims know that you can never find out all the answers in this life.

You just have to wait until the next.

But the one thing that makes the puzzle make sense is if you live your life in Truth.

And as we know, the one most important Truth in life is that the One God exists

at the beginning and end of everything.

No matter how hard some people like to try, there are some questions that have answers we can never prove.

We have to choose what we believe according to the best that we know,

and that freedom to choose what we believe is the truth

is the most important freedom that people have.

Muslims believe that without that freedom life is not worth living.

That freedom is worth dying for.

And there we see another meaning to the name of the Shahada.

For the word Shahada not only means 'to witness', it also means 'to be a martyr',

that is to be someone who dies for what they believe.

Many of the early muslims were told they would be killed if they would not say that there was no God,

or that there were lots of Gods.

But they believed in only One God, and refused to say what they didn't believe.

Because of this they were sometimes tortured

and sometimes killed.

Those who were killed rather than refusing to say they believed in the One God

are known as martyrs,

and God has said in the Qur'an that those who are martyrs will be given Paradise.