The Change of Qiblah - 30 Verses For 30 Days 2/30

Salamun alaykum, dear brothers and sisters, and welcome to our second Tafsir clip of this month of Ramadan. Today, inshaAllah we are going to delve into a verse from the Qur'an that has to do with, or is situated in the second Juz of the Qur'an. And that is verse 142 and 143 of Surat ul-Baqara. If you've recited the second Juz today, you've definitely come across these verses because these verses are situated at the very beginning of the second Juz.

These verses start out like this: "Sayaqulu as-sufaha'u min an-nas ma wallahum 'an Qiblatihimu allatee kanu 'alaiyha" (2:142). The people who are ignorant, they will sit there and they will say, why did these Muslims, why did they change the direction of their Kibla? "Qul li 'Llahi al-mashriqu wa al-maghrib; yahdi man yasha'u ila Siratin Mustaqim" (2:142). Tell them that the West and the East is for Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. What matters is where Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala tells you to pray, what direction He tells you to pray, otherwise, everywhere is the land of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala.

Then He moves on to verse 143. And as you can tell, these verses were revealed as it relateed to the change in the direction of Kibla. And the Qur'an makes it very clear from the very beginning that those who are outside of the religion, those who decide to be disbelievers, they may not always understand why you do the things that you do. Us living in the places that we live in, we're surrounded by individuals, at times, who may not come from the same background that we come from. They might believe in a different religion, maybe in a different school of thought at times. We have to understand that we may not be able to explain every single detail of the religion to those who are out there.

Sometimes people might look at the way you practice your religion. They might look at it and think that it is very odd, it is very weird. It makes no sense even sometimes because they are not looking at it from the perspective that you are looking at it. You are looking at it from the perspective of an individual who believes in the divineness of the Qur'an, believes in the Prophet being a Messenger. And because of that, whatever he says, you take it.

But someone who does not believe in those things, when he looks at your actions, he might think that your actions are very odd and very weird. And if you look at the incident that took place, the Taghir [change] of the Qibla, it was something that happened mid-prayer in the Dhuhur's prayer, when the Prophet was praying. So that makes it even weirder, if you think about it, from their perspective. So that's the first point that we take away from this verse.

Not everyone may really understand why you do the things that you do and therefore you need to try to take care of your own duty. Trying to explain it to every single person out there may not make full sense to them all the time. The fundamentals of the religion, of course, you should try to explain those. But the details, sometimes people may not understand.

Then there's a second element and this goes into verse 143. Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala says: "Wa ma ja'alna al-Qiblat allatee kunta 'alaiha illa li na'lama man yattabi'u ar-Rasul, min man yanqalibu 'alaa 'aqibayh" (2:143). Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala says: part of the reason why We changed this Qibla, was simply because we wanted to test people. We wanted to see who was going to sit there and say, Ya Rasul Allah, why are we changing the Qibla? This is odd. This is weird. This doesn't make any sense. What's the reason behind it? We wanted to separate these individuals, from those who really believe in the Prophet.

If the Prophet, mid-prayer decides to change his direction, how many of us, including you and me, would change our direction with the Prophet? That's not a small test. And the Qur'an is saying that this is a test to figure out who is going to obey and who wasn't, mainly because you may not know the reason of this change of direction mid-prayer, and that adds to the difficulty of the test. Sometimes when you know the reason behind the test, it is easier to go along with it. But sometimes when you don't know the reason behind it, it becomes more difficult.

This is why Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala adds: "Wa in kanat la kabeeratan illa 'ala alladheena hada Allah" (2:143). This would have been very difficult for anyone to act upon unless Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala had guided their heart. So we have to understand that we are going to be tested in this manner. We are going to be tested at times with things that we may not know the exact reason behind, that's part of the test.

And we also have to understand that those who are outside of the religion may not always understand why you do all the details that you do. You have to take care of your own duty. Maybe you try to explain it to them, but if it doesn't make sense to them, the details, understand that you are looking at the religion from a different perspective than they are looking at the religion from.