The Cow

#3 Sura Baqara (2: 177)

What is Islam? Who is a Muslim? In the face of so much ugliness and obfuscation that takes place, ostensibly in the name of God, this verse speaks beautifully and lucidly of the ethics that frame not only a relationship with the Divine, but relations between people as well as with our individual consciences.

It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East or the West; righteousness is belief in God and the Last Day and the angels and the Book and the prophets; it is generosity, out of love for Him, to family, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the poor, and for the freedom of those held captive; it is prayer, and charity, and the keeping of promises when they are made; it is patience in distress, and affliction, and at times of struggle. These are people of truth and sincerity.