What It Means - Day 252

"To God belongs the East and the West. Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God. God is All-Encompassing, Knowing."

Quran 2:115

We've discussed similar verses previously. This particular one is drawn from al-Baqarah, the second surah, the longest in the Quran, here rendered as "The Cow." On one level is relates to the direction of the qiblah, especially in regards to the change during the Prophet's life from facing toward Jerusalem and instead turning towards Mecca. However, it's also obviously more profound than that. As Nasr tells us, "This verse can also be taken as an allusion to the Omnipresence of God, who is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward (57:3), manifest in all things, though naught is like unto Him (42:11). This verse is understood to mean that God is present everywhere and and is one of the scriptural foundations for the Sufi doctrine of the 'oneness of being,' or wahdat al-wujud." (Study Quran, p. 54) To me, it also brings up the folly of the notion that we as Muslims, or any religion at any time, would ever think that we have a monopoly on God and the one clear, true vision of the divine.