The pillars are the shahada, salah, sawm, zakat, and the hajj. The shahada is the basic tenet of Islam which states that “I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” Salah is the ritual prayer which must be performed five times a day while facing towards Mecca. Sawm is fasting during Ramadan, during this time Muslims must not eat or drink between sun rise and sun set. Zakat is the practice of giving to the less fortunate. The Hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca. Every able bodied Muslim who can afford must make the trip once in their lifetime.

The Ten Commandments are a part of the foundation of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The Ten Commandments were told to Moses by God and lay out some important dos and don’ts. While all versions of the Ten Commandments include the same material they split it up differently. If all possible divisions of the commandments were include there would be a total of 12. Check out this table from wikipedia.org for a breakdown of different versions.

Most saints are associated with a cause. Many are actually the patron saint of more than one cause. When you consider that the Catholic Church has over 10,000 saints there is bound to be some overlap in causes. One of these overlaps is twitching (actually against twitching). There are two saints that are against twitching. One is Saint Cornelius and the other is Saint Bartholomew (also an apostle). So if you have a problem with twitching, you also have a problem of how to chose which saint to pray to.

The Rastafarian movement started in the 1930s. One of its central beliefs is that Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Rastafarian’s back up this claim with their interpretation of the Bible, they say that Selassie’s birth was foretold in the Book of Revelations. One of the main reasons for the worship of Selassie was that Ethiopia was the only part of Africa that was not under colonial rule at the time. This was very important fact to the Pan African movement that was ocurring at the time in North America. Also, Selassie’s blood line can be traced back to King Solomon.