The fools among the people will say “What has turned them from the direction they used to face in their prayersḍ” The eyes of the disbelievers were weak so the correct view about all the circumstances of the believers was not apparent to them. They looked with an eye to finding ugliness and let loose their tongues to oppose everything that was and would be from [the believers]. They did not see anything new without bringing forth a new objection to it. That included the change in the matter of the qibla when it was shifted to the Kaʿba. They said that if their qibla was correct what would turn them from itḍ So [God] said: Say: “To God belong the East and the West. He guides whomever He will to a straight path.” The servants worship toward any region and direction they will. Similarly the companions of absence and those who are veiled from witnessing [the way in which] the Real grants free agency to His friends seek only certain aspects of the affair and bring their own states to bear upon them. If they had seen the whole picture with singular vision they would have been saved from the pain of divisive thinking the distraction of accursed thoughts and the claims of fractured conjecture but God guides whom He wills to His light.
