Al-Baqarah 2:122–150

The Children of Israel were selected by God to perform a very special task: they were to call other nations to turn to God, impressing on them the fact that they were answerable to their Lord for their actions. God sent innumerable prophets from amongst them to help and guide them in the performance of this task—Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Zachariah, John the Baptist and Jesus, to name just a few. Over the centuries, however, the community of the Children of Israel began to degenerate. They took their privileged position, which was in fact due solely to the lofty task that had been entrusted to them, to be an indication of ethnic superiority. They thus lost their right to be representatives of divine religion on earth. The coming of the Arab prophet signified the replacement of the Children of Israel by the Children of Ishmael as God’s chosen people: it was they who were chosen to carry on the task of communicating God’s word to other nations of the world. Those among the Children of Israel who were truly pious and God-fearing soon realized that the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad came to him from God. They recognized that the word he preached emanated from the same source that had inspired the prophets before him. Those who denied him were acting solely out of prejudice: they refused to accept that any other nation besides their own could have been selected to benefit by God’s favour. These people were warned, through the Arab prophet, that in the next world value would be attached solely to true faith borne out by earnest actions. In this world one person is able to bear the burden of another; sometimes intercession is accepted; sometimes one can free oneself by giving compensation; sometimes a helper is at hand to see one through a difficult situation. In the next world, however, none of these mitigating factors will be allowed to come into play. There, God’s justice will apply to one and all equally, for no ethnic group holds a monopoly over the next world. Take the example of Abraham, patriarch of both the Arabs and the Jews. He was granted leadership of mankind only after he had undergone very severe tests, and had shown himself to be faithful and true to God under all circumstances. What God had demanded of Abraham was the most difficult sacrifice—his son’s life—and when God finally intervened before Abraham could actually sacrifice his own son, it was because Abraham had demonstrated his perfect willingness to make any sacrifice demanded of him by God, no matter how great or how terrible it might have been. The rule that applied to Abraham applies to every generation: only those who prove themselves worthy will be granted a share in God’s covenant; those who do not will meet the same fate as any other offenders in God’s sight, regardless of the nation to which they belong. One who is willing to make soul-searing sacrifices for God’s cause shows his utmost dedication to it: it is only just and natural, then, that he should become the leader of his people.

Every year, the faithful come from all over the world to visit the Ka‘bah in Makkah, where no one is allowed to harm even the lowliest living creature; for Makkah has been made into a sacred place of worship for all time. Since people come to this place to remember God in an atmosphere of peace and solitude, it has to be cleansed of all impurities, and all activities that are contrary to this basic purpose are banned. Here the faithful bow and prostrate themselves, their greatest mark of respect for their Creator being the circumambulation of the Ka‘bah.

In ancient times Arabia was the most arid land on earth: its sandy surfaces and barren rocks were totally unsuitable for any kind of cultivation. Worse, it was totally exposed to attacks from the outside world. Four thousand years ago Abraham was commanded to take his family into an ‘uncultivable valley’, in that part of Arabia known as Hijaz, and settle them there. Abraham bowed to the will of God without slightest hesitation. When he had taken his family to that ‘uncultivable and inhospitable valley’ he prayed to God, ‘O my God, I have done as was commanded. Now listen to the call of your servant and make this town a place of peace, and make special provision for the material needs of its citizens; for the land that they inhabit is uncultivable.’ Abraham’s prayer was answered: the land of Hijaz has remained an abode of peace and plenty up to the present day. The believer’s whole life should be an act of worship. In whatever far-off corner of the world he lives, he should at all times remember that, one day, he shall have to return to the Lord. He should cause no harm to his fellow men, and as for the earth he lives on, it should be thought of as a place of worship, and kept free of all pollution. Although physically in this world, his heart and mind should always be focused on God—his life should revolve around Him alone; his whole life should be that of submission to Him. True religion makes certain demands on everyone, sometimes even requires that his children be taken to a place as arid and uncultivable as Abraham’s valley. Whatever is entailed, he should faithfully carry out God’s commandments and only then pray to God that He should make his efforts successful. It may well be that God will make fountains gush forth from a dry desert, and lush crops spring forth from a barren land. Whatever splendour and glory one is accorded in this life, these things in themselves do not signify that one is considered fit by God for the leadership of mankind. Everything given to man is a means of testing him and there is no one who is exempt from God’s trial. Leadership indicates that one has been selected by God to represent Him in the nations of the world, and it is only for those who have been found fit by God to represent His divine religion on earth.

God ordained that a universal centre of Islamic dawah be established in Hijaz. Almighty God chose Abraham and his family to establish this centre and make provision for its functioning. The words which Abraham and Ishmael uttered when they were building the house of God in Makkah were, in addition to being supplications to God, an indication of their unwavering fidelity to God’s scheme of things. It is prayer of this kind that is most pleasing to God, so He accepted their prayer and a permanent fountain of spiritual life for the whole world gushed forth from the barren desert of Arabia. The name of this fountain was Islam. As for the people who inhabited this desert, the offspring of Ishmael, God made them enthusiastic proponents of the Islamic cause: He enabled them to propagate His word far and wide. Through them, he informed mankind how they should please their Lord, so that He might turn to them in mercy. It was to the Children of Ishmael that the final prophet was sent, and for the first time in history, the entire prophetic pattern was recorded for posterity, so that future generations could follow it.

The first and foremost task of God’s messenger is to interpret His signs, which are proofs of His greatness and power. God has introduced innumerable signs into human nature as well as into the outside world to enable human beings to know their Creator. But these signs have to be unveiled by God’s messenger: he shares his divine insight with them so that they may have a glimpse of God’s glory.

The message taught by the Prophet Muhammad was exactly the same as had been taught by Abraham. But those People of the Book, who prided themselves on being followers of Abraham, led the opposition against the Prophet. Why did they act in this manner? The reason was that the religion that the Prophet taught, and which Abraham had taught before him, was the religion of Islam. Now, Islam means total submission to God, and it was this religion that Abraham handed down to his offspring. But the religion that the People of the Book practised had nothing to do with total submission to God. Having lapsed into permissiveness and, unwilling to change this lifestyle, they had allowed their religion to degenerate into a series of hollow rituals, which they fondly believed would make it easy for them to enter paradise. In the religion that the Prophet Muhammad taught, however, one could gain salvation only by virtue of one’s actions. The People of the Book, for their part, thought that their affiliation to a nation of saints and prophets would be sufficient to earn them redemption. There was a world of difference then between Islam, the true religion of Abraham, and the religion that the People of the Book practised and attributed to him. True religion means acceptance of divine guidance, as revealed to man through the prophets, whereas the religion practised by the People of the Book was based on their own national legacy, a collection of national traditions, which had accumulated over generations.

Attaching oneself to saints and prophets, living or dead, lulls one into a false sense of security. It leads one to imagine that just as one has been attached to them in this life, one will remain attached to them in the next. It makes one feel that their surplus of good deeds will make up for one’s own shortcomings. The People of the Book were immersed in this form of wishful thinking to the extent that they had invented a dogma of ancestral salvation, pinning all their hopes on the holiness of their elders. But it is sheer self-deception to think that one person will receive the reward of another’s actions. In reality, everyone will reap the rewards, and bear the burden of punishment for his own actions. No one will be made to share in the reward, or punishment, which is awarded to another by virtue of his actions on earth. One who submits to God finds that he has to face all kinds of difficulties in this life. His worldly hopes and ambitions will not necessarily be fulfilled. Yet one who is firm in the faith will not be put off by adversity; he will persevere, making sure that he leaves this world as a believer, so that he can look forward to God’s blessings in the next world.

The religion that the Prophet Muhammad taught was the religion of the Prophet Abraham, the very religion to which the Jews and the Christians claimed allegiance. Why was it, then, that they turned away from the Prophet Muhammad? The reason for this was that the religion brought by the Prophet, taught people to take on the hue of God; to devote themselves to Him entirely. With the People of the Book, religion had a different meaning. For them religion was reduced to a symbol of national pride. The message brought by the Prophet hurt their pride, so they turned against him. Those who consider their own race superior to others cannot accept the truth when it manifests itself in some nation other than their own. They would believe in prophets who came from amongst their own people, but not in those who appeared among other people outside their own community. The only personalities that they acknowledged were those who belonged to their own race. Those who look at religion as worship of God, on the other hand, recognize the truth of every piece of wisdom that God sends down, no matter who teaches it. For the theologians to realize that the Prophet was God’s final messenger was not a matter of insuperable difficulty. There was nothing to prevent them from seeing the truth of his religion. They should have proclaimed what, deep down in their hearts, they knew to be true. But they did not accept him as the final prophet, as was enjoined by God, for the simple reason that they were more concerned about their own position and prestige. Just as the people of old received their just deserts as individuals, so will latter-day generations receive what they merit on their own account, for truth is an individual, not an ancestral matter. The mistake of the People of the Book was to think that contemporary and succeeding generations would be rewarded for the good deeds of their ancestors. The idea of original sin held by Christians implied that sins were handed down from one generation to the next. Such beliefs have no basis in truth. Everyone will be rewarded by God according to his or her own personal actions; no one can be held responsible for the deeds of others.

If faith is to be of the kind which pleases God, it must be identical with that of the Companions of the Prophet. What was so special about that faith was that it amounted to acceptance of the truth on an abstract level; it was belief in truth for the sake of truth. This had become a rarity in a society which, revering the words of the ancient prophets, regarded as truth whatever had been sanctified by centuries-old tradition. Continued belief in such ‘truth’, embellished as it was by myth and legend, became a matter of national pride; to regard it in any other light would have been to deny a great legacy from the past. Unlike the ancient prophets, who were great figures, eulogised in their nations’ history, the Prophet Muhammad came afresh to the world with no accumulation of tradition behind him to lend weight to his words. When truth stands on its own, unsupported by history or tradition, as it was in the time of the Prophet, those who accept it do so for the pure and simple reason that it is the truth. This is the kind of belief that God recognizes and accepts. This is true faith; only faith of such strength and purity is acceptable to God.

The qiblah is the direction which Muslims face when praying. 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 in whichever direction one turns, one faces Him. The direction that He lays down is the one that we should face in our prayer, irrespective of what 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 Madinah, he was commanded to alter the direction of prayer, and face Makkah instead of Jerusalem. Some people found this change difficult to accept. How, they thought, could another place be the qiblah when Jerusalem had held this position for time immemorial? The opponents of Islam used the change of the qiblah as an excuse to spread 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 Muhammad’s claim to prophethood. ‘He seems to be in two minds about his own mission,’ they said. ‘Sometimes he faces Jerusalem, sometimes Makkah.’ Others said, ‘Well, if the Ka‘bah in Makkah is the real qiblah, then all the prayers which Muslims have made facing towards Jerusalem have been wasted.’ These were the sort of objections that the Prophet’s opponents made. True believers, those who were not caught up in the externals of religion, did not let such things disturb them. They realized that it was not the direction of prayer that really mattered, but God’s commandment. God could lay down any qiblah, whenever He liked. Whatever He prescribed should be followed. The commandment regarding the change of qiblah was revealed seventeen months after the Prophet’s emigration to Madinah. The Prophet was praying with a group of his companions at the time. As soon as God’s commandment was revealed, all of them turned, still praying, from Jerusalem to Makkah—a 160 degree turn from north-west to south.

Acting as intermediaries, the prophets used to receive guidance from God and convey it to the people. This process continued for thousands of years until the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad, with whom the chain of prophethood ended. But, even after the end of the prophethood, the conveying of God’s message to the people had, and still has to be continued. Generation after generation, innumerable people are born and, before they die, they must be told about the reality of life and the divine commandments. After the death of the Prophet, this responsibility had to be discharged by the Muslims. Now, with the end of the prophethood, the entire Muslim community stands between God and the people, a position formerly occupied by the prophets. This is not a reward for superiority but a massive responsibility, so that all of the Muslims’ social and community-based planning must of necessity be dawah-oriented. Muslims should be most eager to carry out this mission, should make it their principal goal and be ready to sacrifice their all for it. The change of qiblah was a sign that God had removed the Children of Israel from their position of spiritual leadership and appointed in their place the followers of Muhammad. Now the Ka’bah shall remain, until the end of time, the rallying point for the call of divine religion, a centre for all true believers in God, with Muslims acting as a ‘middle nation’ (ummat wasat), or intermediaries, between God and man. It is for them to communicate the word of God to their fellow human beings, just as the Prophet had done in his time. This is a responsibility which is eternally incumbent upon the Muslim community. Their success, in this world and in the Hereafter, depends upon how effectively they discharge it.

Not until the Prophet Muhammad received divine revelation on a particular matter, did he change the pattern of previous prophets. Faithful to this principle, he initially made Jerusalem his prayer direction, or the 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 torch-bearers 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 form. For this reason the Prophet eagerly awaited instructions to change the qiblah. In the second year after his emigration to Madinah, he received the commandment. The prophets who hailed from 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 expected. Yet only a few of them, such as ‘Abdullah ibn Salam and Mukhairiq, 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 was the fact that they were used to behave as they wished. 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. In their perversity, they want the kind of satisfaction from the denial of God’s signs, which God would have wished them to derive from their acceptance.

Whenever God reveals some truth to the world, it is supported by clear arguments. No one can then fail to recognize it to be the truth. Those who do not make the truth their own, show that they had never realised God, for, if they had, they would have recognized His word when they heard it. Those who find words to reject the truth think that they have discovered strong arguments to justify their stand. They think that they are standing on firm logical ground. But very soon they realize that those words were nothing but imaginary props, which they themselves had devised to give false satisfaction to their egos.

When the Ka‘bah in Makkah was appointed as the prayer direction, or qiblah, the People of the Book started discussing whether the East was God’s direction or the West. They saw the matter as one of direction alone, but this was nothing other than sheer ignorance on their part. The selection of the House of God as the qiblah was not merely the specification of a certain direction for prayer; it was a sign that the time had come for God to reveal His greatest favour to man. It had been decided a long time ago, that, in answer to the prayer of Abraham and Ishmael (see 2:129), God would send a final Prophet to the world. The path to life everlasting was now being thrown open to all: God was showing His ultimate favour to mankind. The bringing of religion to its final stage of perfection in Islam does not mean that previous religions were incomplete. They too were complete in themselves, but none of them was preserved in its original and authentic form. God had revealed true religion time and time again, but on each occasion mankind had rebelled against it and either distorted it or allowed it to fall into oblivion. Now it was revealed in its ultimate and indelible form. Divine religion that had deteriorated into a set of mythological tales was now incorporated into history in the form of solid facts. Up till then, no pattern of true religion had been preserved for posterity; now, it was placed before mankind in a permanent, living and practical form. The change of qiblah, rather than denoting a change from one direction of worship to another, more sacred one, showed the completion of God’s guidance to mankind.