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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Al-mizan an Exegesis of the Qur'an (volume Two) Volume 2: Surah Baqarah, Verse 177 It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteousness is the one who believes in Allah and the last day and the angels and the Book and the prophets, and gives away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the way­farer and the beggars and for (the emancipation of) the captives, and keeps up prayer and pays the zakat, and the performers of their promise when they make a promise, and the patient in distress and affliction and in time of conflict - these are they who are true and these are they who are the pious (177).

**COMMENTARY ** It is said that when the qiblah was changed from Baytu 'l­Maqdis to the Ka'bah, there ensued a long drawn out controversy and conflict in the public. It was then that this verse was revealed. QUR’AN: It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West: al-Birr (= righteousness); al-barr (= righteous), it is a perpetual adjective. Qibal (= to­wards, in the direction of), al-Qiblah (= a certain direction) is derived from it.

Dhu 'l-qurba (= relative); al-yatama is plural of al-yatim (= orphan; he who has lost his father); al-masakin is plural of al-miskin (miserably poor, one who suffers a worse condition than al-faqir =poor). Ibnu 's-sabil (= one stranded in journey); ar-riqab is plural of ar-raqabah (=neck; it refers to slave). al-Ba’sa' is a masdar like al-bu's, both having the same meaning: hardship, poverty.

A-Darra’ too is a masdar like ad-darr and both mean affliction with injury or loss, for example, when a man is afflicted with a disease, injury, or loss of property or child. al-Ba's (= intensity of war). QUR’AN: but righteousness is the one who believes in Allah: Instead of defining righteousness, the verse turns to describing the righteous ones; thus it introduces the people in the light of their attributes.

In this way, it points to the fact that abstract ideals and abstruse ideas have no value in Islam unless they appear in concrete shape in the character of a man. It is a well-known style of the Qur’an that it explains and defines a condition and a rank by introducing the people having that rank and condition; it is never satisfied with mere theoretical explanations of good and bad, virtue and vice.