Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Surah Ali 'Imran
Surah 3 · Ali 'Imran · verse 96 of 200

Quran 3:96 · Ali 'Imran

إِنَّ أَوَّلَ بَيۡتٖ وُضِعَ لِلنَّاسِ لَلَّذِي بِبَكَّةَ مُبَارَكٗا وَهُدٗى لِّلۡعَٰلَمِينَ

Indeed, the first House [of worship] established for mankind was that at Makkah - blessed and a guidance for the worlds

Translation: Sahih International
Maulana’s commentary · Tazkirul Quran

According to the Jews’ self-made set of religious laws, eating the meat of the camel and the rabbit was illegal, while it was quite licit in Islam. So the Jews would ask, if Islam was a revealed religion, why it was that the lawful and the unlawful were different in Islam from what had been laid down in the former revealed religions. Similarly, they would ask how it was that a religion revealed by God could command the direction of prayer to be the Ka‘bah instead of al-Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem), which had remained the direction for prayer in the teachings of all the prophets up till then. They in fact refused to believe that God could reveal a religion in which the Ka‘bah was held to be the direction for prayer.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Tazkirul Quran

Maulana explains this verse in 5 lectures2007 to 2025

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