Surah 2. Al-Baqara, Ayah 148

Lit., "everyone has a direction...", etc. Almost all of the classical commentators, from the Companions of the Prophet downwards, interpret this as a reference to the various religious communities and their different modes of "turning towards God" in worship. Ibn Kathir, in his commentary on this verse, stresses its inner resemblance to the phrase occurring in 5:48 : "unto every one of you have We appointed a [different] law and way of life". The statement that "every community faces a direction of its own" in its endeavour to express its submission to God implies, firstly, that at various times and in various circumstances man's desire to approach God in prayer has taken different forms (e.g., Abraham's choice of the Ka'bah as his qiblah, the Jewish concentration on Jerusalem, the eastward orientation of the early Christian churches, and the Qur'anic commandment relating to the Ka'bah); and, secondly, that the direction of prayer - however important its symbolic significance may be - does not represent the essence of faith as such: for, as the Qur'an says, "true piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west" ( 2:177 ), and, "God's is the east and the west" ( 2:115 and {142}). Consequently, the revelation which established the Ka'bah as the qiblah of the Muslims should not be a matter of contention for people of other faiths, nor a cause of their disbelief in the truth of the Qur'anic revelation as such (Manar II, 21 f.).

The question is how we are to construe the pronoun huwa in the original. The alternative translation would be: "To each is a goal to which he turns." The simile of life being a race in which we all zealously run forward to the one goal, viz., the goal of good, may be applied individually and nationally. This supplies another argument of the Ka'ba Qibla, viz., the unity of goal, with diversity of races, traditions and temperaments.