East West

And to Allāh belongs the east and the west. So wherever you [might] turn, there is the Face¹ of Allāh. Indeed, Allāh is all-Encompassing and Knowing.

The foolish among the people will say, "What has turned them away from their qiblah,¹ which they used to face?"² Say, "To Allāh belongs the east and the west. He guides whom He wills to a straight path."

Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in Allāh, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes prayer and gives zakāh; [those who] fulfill their promise when they promise; and [those who] are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous.

Have you not considered the one who argued with Abraham about his Lord [merely] because Allāh had given him kingship? When Abraham said, "My Lord is the one who gives life and causes death," he said, "I give life and cause death." Abraham said, "Indeed, Allāh brings up the sun from the east, so bring it up from the west." So the disbeliever was overwhelmed [by astonishment], and Allāh does not guide the wrongdoing people.

And We caused the people who had been oppressed to inherit the eastern regions of the land and the western ones, which We had blessed. And the good word [i.e., decree] of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel because of what they had patiently endured. And We destroyed [all] that Pharaoh and his people were producing and what they had been building.

And mention, [O Muḥammad], in the Book [the story of] Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place toward the east.

Allāh is the Light¹ of the heavens and the earth. The example of His light² is like a niche within which is a lamp;³ the lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearly [white] star lit from [the oil of] a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire. Light upon light. Allāh guides to His light whom He wills. And Allāh presents examples for the people, and Allāh is Knowing of all things.

[Moses] said, "Lord of the east and the west and that between them, if you were to reason."

So they pursued them at sunrise.

Lord of the heavens and the earth and that between them and Lord of the sunrises.¹

And whoever is blinded from remembrance of the Most Merciful - We appoint for him a devil, and he is to him a companion.

And indeed, they [i.e., the devils] avert them from the way [of guidance] while they think that they are [rightly] guided

Until, when he comes to Us [at Judgement], he says [to his companion], "How I wish there was between me and you the distance between the east and west; and what a wretched companion."

[He is] Lord of the two sunrises and Lord of the two sunsets.¹

So I swear by the Lord of [all] risings and settings¹ that indeed We are able

[He is] the Lord of the East and the West; there is no deity except Him, so take Him as Disposer of [your] affairs.¹