Clarification 43 - The Qiblah of Taste

Part of Alban Fejza: Refutations - The "Clarifications"

I. His Conclusions, and How He Reaches Them

Clarification 43 opens with a world tour everyone agrees on - Europe faces south-east, Australia north-west - and then arrives at North America, where flat maps say south-east and globes say north-east. Both camps, he rules, have inconclusive arguments, "and when arguments are not enough, we need guidance... and that is why God sends messengers." The guidance he delivers proceeds in three moves. First, a taxonomy: the Quran "never directly orders the believers to face Mecca, or Kaaba, per se... it only orders us to face the Sacred Masjid," which he defines as "the ground underneath" the Kaaba. Second, a tunnel: if the ground one meter down is still the Sacred Masjid, then so is the ground a mile down, "all the way to the center of the Earth" - and since bowing and prostrating face the center of the Earth, "if you do the Contact Prayers, in each case you are facing the Sacred Masjid, regardless if you are turning East, or West, or North or South - it does not matter." Third, a definition: "the very definition of the word 'Qiblah' in the Quran is 'the direction with which the messenger is pleased with' (2:144)... it's simply a matter of taste." What does this messenger like? "The whole range of directions from North-East to South-East" for the United States and Canada - a liberty Americans enjoy because they "built roads before building mosques," to be paid for in "more expensive flight tickets" to Hajj. The conclusion, capitalized in the original: "No wrong Qiblah. IT'S ONLY WRONG TO ARGUE ABOUT IT."

II. The Headers Say Restored; the Footnote Says Command

Open the translation he claims to defend to the verses he cites. Over 2:144 stands Rashad's header: "Qiblah Restored to Mecca." Over 2:149, again: "Qiblah Restored to Mecca." Two headers, both naming Mecca - the city he says the Quran never orders anyone to face - and both saying restored, which is the history his taste-doctrine erases. The Qiblah was not chosen by a messenger's palate; it was established through Abraham - 2:125, "We have rendered the shrine (the Ka'aba) a focal point for the people... You may use Abraham's shrine as a prayer house", under 2:127's header "Abraham Delivered All the Practices of Submission" and 22:26's, "Pilgrimage, Like All Duties in Submission, Decreed Through Abraham." The one historical deviation was not a preference either. Rashad's footnote on 2:142-145: "'Qiblah' is the direction one faces during the Contact Prayers (Salat). When Gabriel conveyed to Muhammad the command to face Jerusalem instead of Mecca, the hypocrites were exposed... Only the true believers were able to overcome their prejudices; they readily obeyed the messenger." A command, conveyed by Gabriel, obeyed - at every node of the chain the direction descends from God: established through Abraham, redirected as a divine test, and - per the headers - restored to Mecca. And 2:144 itself gives the grammar: "We now assign a Qiblah that is pleasing to you. Henceforth, you shall turn your face towards the Sacred Masjid... all of you shall turn your faces towards it... this is the truth from their Lord." God assigns; the messenger receives; the believers are commanded; and the Book calls the result the truth - the exact category ("right and wrong") the Clarification insists it has nothing to do with.

III. A Test You Cannot Fail Is Not a Test

His central assurance - "it's not even theoretically possible for God's messenger to misguide you in this issue" - collides with the verse he cites for it. 2:143: "We changed the direction of your original Qiblah only to distinguish those among you who readily follow the messenger from those who would turn back on their heels. It was a difficult test, but not for those who are guided by GOD." A difficult test, that distinguished people - which requires that facing one way followed the messenger and facing another way failed him. Under "no wrong Qiblah," the test the verse describes could never have occurred; his doctrine does not interpret 2:143, it abolishes the event 2:143 records. His comfort-quote from the same verse - "God will not waste your Contact Prayers because of the direction" - reverses its referent: "GOD never puts your worship to waste" reassured believers who had prayed toward Jerusalem in obedience to the prior command, not worshipers picking bearings by mood. 2:150 adds the function his liberty deletes: face the Sacred Masjid "...Thus, the people will have no argument against you" - a unified, recognizable practice; a congregation fanned across ninety degrees of personal taste is nothing but arguments. And his capitalized closer - "IT'S ONLY WRONG TO ARGUE ABOUT IT (2:142)" - misfires last: 2:142's fools are not people who argue about directions; they are the mockers who questioned the change God commanded - under Rashad's header "Abolition of Bigotry and Prejudice."

IV. The Cone to the Center of the Earth

The tunnel argument - Sacred Masjid equals the ground beneath the Kaaba, therefore the planet's core, therefore every bow faces it - is refuted by apposition in the translation he quotes. 5:97: "GOD has appointed the Ka'bah, the Sacred Masjid, to be a sanctuary for the people" - the two names side by side, one referent - with Rashad's footnotes on 5:97 and 2:149 hammering the point he needs to be false: "The Quran talks only about one Sacred Masjid." One - definite, locatable, and treated as a place throughout: Muhammad journeys "from the Sacred Masjid (of Mecca)" (17:1 - Rashad's own parenthetical putting the city he says the Quran never names as the target directly inside the phrase), idolaters "shall not be permitted to approach the Sacred Masjid" (9:28), and believers "will enter the Sacred Masjid... and you will cut your hair or shorten it... there" (48:27). You cannot enter the center of the Earth, or get a haircut in it, or be barred from approaching a place that is directly beneath every human being who has ever stood anywhere. And a command that is satisfied by construction - whatever you do, you are facing it - is not a command at all; his geometry does not clarify 2:144's order, it renders the order unwritable. The deepest irony is the tunnel's provenance. In the very lecture shown below, Rashad raised the through-the-earth point himself - "the shortest distance to Mecca is actually through the earth" - as a reductio against the shortest-distance camp: if geometry alone decided, the answer would be absurd, therefore geometry alone does not decide; the command does. His self-declared successor picked up the reductio and preached it as the doctrine.

Read the boxed lines of that transcript against this Clarification's conclusion. Rashad: "The commandment is repeated to Muhammad, and then to us, to all the believers. So therefore, it is very important that we face the Qibla that is Mecca, in obedience to God." Rashad, moments later, on the masjids of Tucson: "we have a classic example of the Qibla, the right Qibla, the wrong Qibla, and what makes it right and what makes it wrong." The messenger this ministry claims to continue taught, in one breath: the Qiblah is Mecca, it is obedience, it is important, and a wrong Qiblah exists - he even named the neighboring mosques that faced north-east as facing "not the direction we face." Clarification 43 teaches: no wrong Qiblah, direction is taste, north-east is fine, and the only sin is arguing. There is no reading under which both are clarifying the same religion.

V. Geography Without a Referee

The dispute he appointed himself to settle is not even a religious one - it is spherical trigonometry, and both of his "drawbacks" are muddles. From New York, the great-circle path to Mecca departs at about 59 degrees (north-east) and the constant-compass rhumb line at about 101 degrees (east-south-east); that the great circle's bearing changes en route is not a flaw in one camp's argument, it is what every great circle does on a sphere; and the rhumb line is neither "constant relative to the stars" (the stars wheel overhead nightly; a compass bearing is not fixed to them) nor a "direction... supposed to be the shortest distance" - a direction is not a distance at all. Communities weigh those two conventions with a calculator, not a revelation. What he adds instead is the fan: every bearing from north-east to south-east declared correct for the continent "because that's the way the messenger likes it" - Alaska awarded everything from north to south-west - justified by a fairness doctrine in which the Old World "had the privilege to build mosques before building roads" while Americans "are forced to adjust the mosques according to the roads," and the flexibility "will have to be paid for... when they travel to Hajj, they will have a longer distance, and therefore more expensive flight tickets." Airline pricing as divine bookkeeping, road grids as the reason God loosens His decree, prayers compared to folded currency that "has the same value, face up, or face down" - and 4:28, "GOD wishes to lighten your burden," drafted to notarize it. The lecture in Section IV shows what the messenger he invokes did with the same question: he called the shortest-distance case "smart-alecky," told his congregation which direction was wrong, and faced Mecca. No fan, no invoice, no taste.

VI. What Survives - and What the Rest Is For

Peer review, honestly given. 2:115 is real: "To GOD belongs the east and the west." 2:177 is real: "Righteousness is not turning your faces towards the east or the west" - under the header "Righteousness Defined," ritual direction alone saves nobody. Both verses sit in Rashad's translation two pages from the triple command they are now deployed to dissolve, and the Book keeps both without strain: the direction is commanded (2:144, 149, 150 - "the truth from your Lord"), and the direction is not the whole of righteousness (2:177). It is also true that a believer estimates the bearing - no one is condemned over degrees of arc; 2:143 promises exactly that generosity to those obeying. But this Clarification does not plead approximation; it abolishes the target. It defines the Qiblah as the messenger's taste against a verse where God assigns it; it declares failure impossible against a verse that calls the Qiblah a difficult test that distinguished people; it digs the one Sacred Masjid into a cone through the planet against the footnote that counts exactly one and the verses where people enter it; and it crowns a liberty doctrine whose stated currencies are road grids and airfare. The pattern completes the series: where Clarification 38 rationed the prayers by latitude and Clarification 39 moved the months by a rewritten verse, Clarification 43 unbinds the direction itself - each time dissolving something Rashad's translation fixes on the header line. "Qiblah Restored to Mecca." Restored - through Abraham, through Muhammad, and stated twice, so that no one claiming to continue the restoration could miss it.

See also the pattern across his material: The Underlying Issue.