148وَلِكُلٍّ وِجهَةٌ هُوَ مُوَلّيها ۖ فَاستَبِقُوا الخَيراتِ ۚ أَينَ ما تَكونوا يَأتِ بِكُمُ اللَّهُ جَميعًا ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلىٰ كُلِّ شَيءٍ قَديرٌMuhammad Asadfor, every community faces a direction of its own, of which He is the focal point.1 Vie, therefore, with one another in doing good works. Wherever you may be, God will gather you all unto Himself: for, verily, God has the power to will anything.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 (Manor 11, 21 f.).