Change of Qibla

One strange property of our planet is the shift and reversal of its magnetic poles. Although nothing really moves on the surface, the direction of the magnetic curves changes as a result of this event. Living on this planet, throughout the story of humanity, a similar shift happened more than once in the religious realm. I am going to coin the term "change of qibla" for this phenomenon. In this blog, I would like to ponder over the events and lessons surrounding the change of qibla.

The first event took place with the creation of the first human, Adam. When he was created, God ordered the angels to prostrate before him, but Satan did not obey this order (2/34). Now let's analyze this event.

It is known that when God ordered the angels to prostrate before Adam, He did not mean to worship Adam, but rather assigned Adam as the chosen direction for the action of prostration. This is similar to the five daily prayers of the Muslims. During these  prayers, they prostrate towards Kaaba in Mecca, but they do not worship it. Rather, God sent a clear order to establish Kaaba as the qibla, hence the direction for the prostrations.

So, going back to the creation of Adam, Satan must have failed to understand this notion. That is, you do an action in a certain way, because God told so. If God changes His preference for you, than you change your action accordingly (e.g. 3/93, 3/50, 3/19, 5/3). If you become obstinate and insist on using the old qibla, thinking that it, too, was ordered by God, that means either your bigotry is overriding your submission to God or that you are honoring your own preferences over God's preference.

Second point on the same issue is that something gains value because God appoints it to such a position. So, why is Adam and humanity the qibla for the angels? Simply because God assigned humanity a value, and the rest of the creation works according to that value (2/30). The fact that humanity has such a superior value so as to become the qibla does not automatically translate to becoming minor deities. It just means that the roles in the game are set as such by the Creator. Before this, Satan might have had a high value, and fear of losing it drove Satan to disobedience and rebellion to God.

I would like to highlight a subtle point here. Satan apparently did not appreciate the fact that value comes with God's assignment, like the selection of a qibla, hence a nominal entity! He must have envisioned that value is a real and separate entity on its own that he could keep for himself. As a result, he resisted the change and wanted to retain himself as the qibla.

A second event of change of qibla can be seen in the events preceding Jesus pbuh. Before the birth of his mother, the expectation among the Jews was that the to-be-born child is going to be the expected Messiah. When they saw a baby girl, they were disappointed, because their rule told them to focus on males, not females. Although most of the chosen people by God in the known history had been men, it was still in the hands of God to appoint any one among the humans as a sign for humanity, be them male or female. Failing to catch this nuance about nominal entities and giving in to the mental comfort of a permanent law, most of the Jewish community missed the unfolding of a unique sign of God before their eyes.

Later when Jesus started conducting his holy mission, what shook the Jews even further was his intrusive and aggressive style towards status-quo (e.g. Mark 2:13-17, 2:23-28, John 8:1-11), such as introducing compassion and mercy as factors equivalent to rigid laws, destroying the system by which religious leaders abused people through religion. From one perspective, they failed to see that the same God who introduced the rigid laws was now revealing a spirit that could change the laws. A law of laws, if you will, was presented to humanity through the message of Jesus. But again, the human mind that was fixated on the deterministic rules, the previous qibla, could not keep up with the change of qibla.

The same shock repeated itself when the line of prophethood shifted from Israelites to Arabs. Although God did not explicitly say that all of His messengers would come from among the Israelites, the existing data indicated that, i.e. all the known messengers and prophets until then were Israelite, including Jesus. When God sent a messenger from among the Arabs, the human mind saw a discrepancy with the "law", i.e. previous qibla, and so rejected the change (3/72-73, 62/2-6). However, if God did not explicitly formulate something, He can change it any way He wants.

Even then, the fact that the first Muslims used to turn towards Jerusalem as their qibla for prayer told the people of the book that their way was the standard (2/143-145). Even for some of the Muslims, turning towards Jerusalem gave a reassurance as to the veracity of their way, hence an agreement with the "experimental data". When God sent orders to change the qibla from Jerusalem to Mecca, not only the people of the book but also some of the Muslims were shaken. Although it was God who was telling them to change their direction for prayer, some of the initial reactions for doing it felt like committing a sin. But again, Jerusalem is valuable and had been the qibla, not because it was valuable on its own and not because it was holy independent of God (2/177) but, because God had chosen it for a certain time. In other words, it is not that Jerusalem had a superiority independent of Allah so that He appoints it as the qibla, rather it is that Jerusalem is sacred because Allah appoints it so. When God changed His order of preference, the matter was finalized.

The similar shock occurred among Muslims when the Turks became the flag carrier of the Islamic civilization. Until the middle of the second millennium, Arabs held the authority for religion. When the Turks entered the history of the middle east and eventually acquired the control of the holy lands and most of the Muslim geography, this change of qibla was not digested well by some communities and conflicts arose afterwards.

Now, let's extract some lessons from these events and observations. First, whenever there is a  change of qibla, our mind is likely to resist even if it knows that it is God changing the qibla. The reason for this resistance is the obsession of the human mind to find unchanging rules and laws and its willingness to submit to them. For more details, you can read a previous blog and another one.

Second, when the qibla changes, using the old one becomes a sin! Although the first qibla, too, was appointed by God, the change comes as a binding law. Venerating the new qibla becomes worship.

Third, anyone who opposes the change of qibla is "backminded". That is they are stuck with the past and with their outdated perception of God's preference.

Fourth, we humans study, discover and exploit the laws of nature, all based on our instinctual presumption that these laws are going to be constant. This mentality works, because these laws are the qiblas set by God, they don't exist on their own power. Rather, we learn about them through science. You can read a previous blog on this issue and another one.

Fifth, "change of qibla" as a concept can take place until the end of time. So, we must equip ourselves with the mental and emotional tools to handle qibla changes, and to avoid sticking to the status-quo ( see Greatest Trouble - part 2, part 3). Remember, status-quo calls for stagnation in mind and thought; and such stagnation both invites the Antichrist and makes you vulnerable to him (see Greatest Trouble - part 1).