Message of the Quran

Message of the Quran

1987 4 April 20-21 Message of the Quran (1187) “The foolish among people will say: ‘What has made them turn away from their qiblah * Say: ‘The east and west are God’s. He guides whom He wills to the right path.’ And thus we have appointed you a middle nation, so that you may be witnesses over mankind, and that your own Apostle may be a witness over you. We decreed your former qiblah only in order that We might know the Apostle’s true adherents and those who were to disown him. It was indeed a hard test, but not to those whom God guided. And never would God make your faith fruitless. He is Compassionate and Merciful to men”. (2:142-143)

The qiblah is the direction Muslims face when they pray. This direction has to do with the form, rather than the reality, of worship. A qiblah is appointed so that prayer may assume an organized pattern. God can change it as He pleases, for every direction faces Him. The direction that He lays down is the one that we should face in our prayer, whatever direction it may be. Before the coming of Islam people had prayed towards Jerusalem. This old qiblah had come to be thought of as sacred and inviolable. In the second year after the Prophet’s emigration to Medina, he was commanded to change the direction of prayer, and face Mecca instead of Jerusalem. Some people found this switch difficult to accept. How, they thought, could another place be the qiblah when Jerusalem had held this position since time immemorial? The Jews used the change of the qiblah as an excuse for spreading all sorts of rumours about the Prophet. Previous prophets have always faced Jerusalem in their prayer, they said. How is it that this prophet has gone against them? This goes to show that the only purpose of his mission is to spite the Jews. Some poured scorn on Mohammad’s claim to prophethood. He seems to be in two minds about his own mission, they said. Sometimes he faces Jerusalem, sometimes Mecca. Others said: “Well, if the Kabah in Mecca is the, real qiblah then all the prayers which Muslims have made towards Jerusalem have been wasted.”

These were the sort of objections that Jews and hypocrites made. True believers, those who were not caught up in the externals of religion, did not let such things discountenance them. They realized that it is not the direction of prayer that really matters, it is God’s Commandment. God can lay down any qiblah, whenever He likes. Whatever He prescribes should be followed. The commandment regarding the change of qiblah was revealed seventeen months after the Prophet’s emigration to Medina. The Prophet was praying along with a group of his companions at the time. As soon as God’s commandment became clear, all of them turned, as they were praying, from Jerusalem to Mecca – a 1600 turn from north-west to south.

*The direction in which all Muslims must pray, whether in their public or private devotions, namely. towards Kabah.

The change of qiblah was a sign indicating that God had removed the Children of Israel from their position of spiritual leadership, and appointed the followers of Mohammad in their place. Now the Kabah would remain, until the end of time, a rallying-point for the call to divine religion, a centre for all true believers in God. The word Wast, translated above as “middle” also holds connotations of intermediation. The word signifies that Muslims are intermediaries between God and man. It is for them to communicate the word of God to their fellow human beings, just as the Prophet of God communicated it to them. This is a responsibility that is always incumbent upon the Muslim community. Their success, both in this world and the next, depends upon how they discharge this responsibility.

“Indeed, We see you look repeatedly towards heaven. We will make you turn towards a qibla that will please you. So turn your face towards the Sacred Mosque; wherever you are, turn your faces to it. Those to whom the (Bible) Book was given know this to be the truth from their Lord. God is not unmindful of what they do. But even if you gave those to whom the Book has been given every proof, they would not accept your qibla nor are you going to follow their qibla nor Would any of them accept the qibla of the other. If, after all the knowledge you have been given you yield to their desires, then you will surely become an evil-doer. Those to whom we gave the Book know him as they know their own sons. But some of them deliberately conceal the truth. The truth is from your Lord: therefore never doubt it (2:144-147).”

Not until the Prophet of Islam received divine revelation on a certain matter, did he change the pattern of previous prophets. Faithful to this principle, he initially made Jerusalem his qiblah, for prophets since the time of Solomon had prayed in that direction. The coming of Islam signalled the removal of the Jews from their position as torchbearers of the true faith. The true faith had also to be separated and made distinct from Jewish tradition, so that it could appear in a new and unmistakably pure from. For this reason the Prophet was eagerly awaiting instructions to change the qiblah. In the second year after his emigration to Medina he received the commandment. The Prophets who had come among the Jewish people had been informed that one day God would alter the qiblah, and they had passed the knowledge On to the Jews. It was something, therefore, that Jewish theologians should have been expecting. Yet only a few of them, such as Abdullah ibn Salam and Mukhaireeq, confirmed the authenticity of this Commandment and acknowledged that God had revealed the truth through the Prophet Muhammad. The reason for the majority’s refusal to follow the prophet Mohammad was the fact that they were used to behaving to as they saw fit. They had certain romantic notions about the special position occupied by their own people, and they had made these the bedrock of their life and creed. Those who give free rein to their own desires will never follow the path of reason. By denying God’s signs, they aspire, in their perversity, to the satisfactions that God wishes man to derive from their acceptance.

Whenever God reveals some truth to the world, he makes it absolutely clear that it is the truth. There can be no valid reason for people refusing to accept it. Those who do not make the truth their own, show that they have never come to know God, for, if they had, they would have recognized His word when they heard it. They summarily reject the truth, and think that these few words that they have deigned to utter are proof that they are standing on firm intellectual ground. But sooner or later they will see the weakness of their arguments and it will be borne in upon them that, all along, they had been labouring under a false sense of security.