The Qur’an says...

The Qur’an says: وَإِذْ جَعَلْنَا الْبَيْتَ مَثَابَةً لِلنَّاسِ وَأَمْنًا وَاتَّخِذُوا مِنْ مَقَامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ مُصَلًّى وَعَهِدْنَا إِلَىٰ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَإِسْمَاعِيلَ أَنْ طَهِّرَا بَيْتِيَ لِلطَّائِفِينَ وَالْعَاكِفِينَ وَالرُّكَّعِ السُّجُودِ “And [remember] when We made the House a resort for mankind and a sanctuary, [declaring], ‘Take the venue of prayer from Abraham’s Station.’ We charged Abraham and Ishmael [with its upkeep, saying], ‘Purify My House for those who go around it, for those who make it a retreat and for those who bow and prostrate.”(Qur’an 2: 125) It is a “resort” or “place of return” because man, who came from the Divine presence, needs to return to God by centering himself on Him by way of His signs - the House being the central-most and manifest of them.

It is a sanctuary, morally speaking, because it is a channel of grace and those that take refuge in it are openly showing that they no longer want to be renegades and fugitives from God. By so doing they accept the grace and receive mercy - entering the flock of God; and God protects his flock. It is also a sanctuary, intellectually speaking, because it centers man, providing him refuge from the vicissitudes of the material realm and the multiplicities of the ephemeral world.

For Divine grace treats man in his totality and in all his dimensions - heart and mind, spirit, soul and body. The Ka’bah is the life-line and beating heart for all people in the world. It lives and breathes. As a refuge, sanctuary, and guiding light shining in the dark, it attracts and draws the people to itself.

It then graces and blesses the worthy from amongst them and releases them, raising them in spirit and body - giving new life and vigour to their spiritual being as well as enriching their material livelihood. It gives them a sustenance which at once increases their intellectual rapture, moral uprightness, and physical worship.

For in God’s Sacred House and the Divine Presence, man rises in respect and awe, realizing all the while that it is not really he who is “doing” the rising - as he is nothing in himself - but that it is his Origin and Source which is raising him.

Seeing himself in this new and novel way, man begins to see everything as being connected to the Origin; casting aside the eyeglasses that made him see things as separate and independent entities, he now sees the all-pervasive unity that resides and resounds in creation.

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