Song: The Five Pillars

I wrote a simple song (nasheed, if you prefer?) to help my girls not only learn but understand the very basics of the five pillars of Islam: testimony of faith (shahadah), prayer (salah), charity (zakat), fasting (sawm) and pilgrimage (hajj).

Sung to the tune of "The Wheels On The Bus". 🚌

(CHORUS)

In Islam, there are five pillars,

Five pillars,

Five pillars.

In Islam, there are five pillars,

Which Muslims all believe in.

The shahadah says that Allah is One:

Laa ‘ilaaha

‘illa-llah,

And Muhammad is His messenger:

Wa Muhammadur-rasoolu-llah.

(CHORUS)

Salah we pray five times a day:

Fajr, Dhuhr,

And ‘Asr,

Maghrib, ‘Isha, five salah.

The prayers we offer daily.

(CHORUS)

Zakat we give to charity,

To help the poor

And the needy.

Zakat, it makes our wealth all clean,

And stops us being greedy.

(CHORUS)

Sawm, we fast in Ramadhaan,

Don’t eat or drink

Til the sun goes down.

Be patient, kind and helpful.

Fasting makes us grateful.

(CHORUS)

Hajj is the holy pilgrimage,

To where Prophet

Ibrahim used to live.

Just once in our life when we have the means,

We should make this journey.

(CHORUS)

I then made it into a small poster (two A4 sheets trimmed down, stuck together and laminated), which you can download a copy of here. 😊

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It was a little difficult to think of another, useful, separate activity to do with the shahadah... We've made it a habit for the girls to recite it in Arabic every night before sleeping, so they were pleasantly surprised to discover they already knew it! As for the English meaning, it's covered in this song... So there wasn't really much else to do lol. That level of detail is fine with us for now. 👍