Page:Five Pillars of Islam (IA fivepillarsofisl00kamauoft).djvu/16

 be ever-active in winning riches of life, it on the other would also make us ready to part with them in making others happy. It should create in us a spirit of self-sacrifice—making it meritorious in our eyes to spend our earnings in the interest of the other. Man is a worshipping animal. He has always adored the Unseen, and has ever been ready to give up everything near and dear to him to please the Deity. Islam has on the one hand, therefore, prescribed a course of discipline under which a Muslim would learn to give up his time, his wealth, his eatables and drinks, and his family and country attachments in the way of God, and on the other hand the religion of God impresses on the minds of its votaries that the cause of Allah is another name for the cause of humanity.

In the first place, Islam enjoins upon me to abandon all my worldly occupations, however absorbing they be, at the time of offering my