Islam As It Is
The Five Pillars of Islam
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uncompromising on the question of right and
wrong. He saw in him a man selflessly devoted to
the discharge of his duties, and one who would
never stoop to idolatrous beliefs. Most important,
God had found in this desert Arab a genuine seeker
after the truth. It could only be such as he who
would appreciate to the full the divine revelations
with which he would be entrusted, and who would
be fully alive to the resultant obligation. It was
precisely because this most perfect of men had
shown himself to be so consistently virtuous over
the first forty years of his life that God chose him as
His final Prophet for all mankind. During the
ensuing twenty-three years of his prophethood,
Mohammad proved that God’s trust in him had not
been misplaced, for he carried out his prophetic
duties with the highest imaginable degree of
integrity. There could have been no conceivably
superior fulfillment of the responsibilities entailed
by prophethood.
It is thanks to the Prophet that God’s Book, as com-
municated to him by God’s Angels, has been
handed down to us in pure and pristine form, thus
making it possible for us to find in His Scriptures a
