Testifying

You know,

for all the extraordinarily subtle interplay of words in the Shahada,

when it comes down to it they are just words,

and as such are used to express a meaning.

They are pointers,

first to an understanding of what the one who testifies means by the word 'God',

but more importantly

the one who makes that statement believes that God is Real,

God is True,

and that sets their whole life in a different context.

With the second half of the Shahadatain,

we accept the understanding of God speaking to humanity through the Messenger,

and the importance of following those requirements of worship that he practised,

like the daily Sala, the annual Saum, the Zaka and the Hajj,

but none of these make any sense without the first half of the Shahada,

believing in the One God that the Messenger believed in,

the God that chose to guide humanity through the life of Muhammad the Messenger.

But with choosing to believe, we not only recognise the need to follow his way of formal worship,

but also recognise that however important those acts of worship were in his life,

they still only filled part of his days,

and the rest of his life is also there to serve as a model for us.

The Ibadat of the Islamic pillars

is to be accompanied by the non-specific acts of goodness,

the Ihsan of our lives,

the translation of occasional acts of human worship into continuous human action.

We recognise God's purpose for humankind as being a moral one,

the choice of virtue and rejection of evil.

With no God to judge our actions,

why bother with considerations of bad or good?

With no Afterlife,

what is the point of avoiding evil in this life if you can get away with it?

What is the point of choosing good

if there is no such thing as justice,

no punishment and no reward?

For all the efforts of non-believers

to justify a system of morality,

it is hard without the Afterlife

and the eternal and universal Judge that we know as Allah.

Making the second Shahada

openly commits us to joining

the community of those who follow the way of Muhammad,

but the first Shahada commits us to God,

an act of witnessing and surrender that shapes all the actions of our life

from that moment on.

The phrase is repeated so frequently during a muslim's life

because it is the bedrock of our life experience.

The words point to that experience,

while at the same time being a mere shadow

of what is there to be experienced.

The Shahada made in childhood is inevitably limited in its scope

to that of a child's life experience and capacity to understand.

But the Shahada is more than enough to satisfy

the intellectual needs of those with a much wider life experience,

those who long to find a way to serve God all the time,

a valid purpose for their lives.

Adults are not babies any more,

and an adult approach to surrender is not confined to the times of ritual worship.

The aim of our Deen is Taqwa,

being Mindful of God,

all the time not just at prayer times