Ibn Taymiyah: Explanation of the hadith, Islam is 5…
The Prophet SAWS said: ‘Islam is founded upon 5: testifying that there is no god except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; establishment of prayer; paying of zakat; fasting Ramadan; and pilgrimage to the House for whoever is able to [make] a way thereto.”
Shaykh Ibn-Taymiyah said:
If there is, among the outward actions that Allah made obligatory, more than these five, then why did he [, the Prophet] say: Islam is these five?
Some people have answered that these [5] are the more visible and the more powerful symbols of Islam, and by the slave’s accomplishing of them his Islam is completed; and by his leaving them is indicated the dissolution of the bond of his being bound [in Islam].
The more precise explanation is: that the Prophet mentioned the religion that renders up the slave to his Lord absolutely, namely the right of Allah upon individuals, of exclusive worship. So He made it a duty for each one who was capable of it that he worship Allah by it, dedicating the religion purely to Him; and this [religion] – it is [made up of] the five.
[As to] what is similar to that [in being obligatory], then it is what is obligatory according to occasions and exigencies, and so the duties [according to circumstances] thereof do not extend universally to all people.
Rather: [these other obligations comprise] either:
[1.] the collective obligations – such as jihad, and commanding the good and forbidding the evil, and what [necessarily] follows [from] that by way of authority, and governance and the issuing of legal dicta, and [scholarly] inquiry, and transmission of hadith, and other [such duties]; or
[2.] the occasional obligations of the rights of individual persons. By [that right] is specified the one on whom it is obligatory to fulfil it, and it is avoided by annulment, and when the matter is achieved, or by acquittal – whether by his releasing or by the accomplishment of the matter…
…For example: settlement of debts; restitution of the usurped [thing], and of loans, and of deposits for safe-keeping; and just restitution of wrongs respecting blood relations and properties and lands – indeed these are rights of individual persons, and when they release from them, [these rights] are voided, being binding on one person, not on another, in one circumstance, not in another.
They are not incumbent upon every competent slave [of Allah] as is unmixed worship of Allah. That is why the Muslims share in them with the Jews and the Christians.
The five [however, are obligations of a kind quite] different, for indeed these are among the distinguishing [things] of the Muslims [i.e. unique and restricted to the Muslims].
