Chapter 2: Surat Al-Baqarah (The Cow), verses 142-143

Translation:

The foolish will ask: ‘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.’ We have made you a just nation, so that you may testify against mankind, and that your own Apostle may be a witness against 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 has guided. And never would God make your faith fruitless. He is Compassionate and Merciful to men.

Tafsir (Commentary):

The qiblah is the direction in which 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 alter the direction of prayer, and face Mecca 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 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 Muhammad’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 160 degree turn from north-west to south.