وَإِذْ جَعَلْنَا الْبَيْتَ مَثَابَةً لِّلنَّاسِ وَأَمْنًا وَاتَّخِذُوا مِن مَّقَامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ مُصَلًّى ۖ وَعَهِدْنَا إِلَىٰ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَإِسْمَاعِيلَ أَن طَهِّرَا بَيْتِيَ لِلطَّائِفِينَ وَالْعَاكِفِينَ وَالرُّكَّعِ السُّجُودِ (125)
(2:125) And remember that We made this House (the Ka'bah) the centre nd sanctuary for mankind and enjoined the people to dedicate to worship the place where Abraham used to stand for prayer, and We urged Abraham and Ismail to keep My House pure for those who would go round it and those who would retire to it for devotion and prayer and for those who would bow down and prostrate themselves there in worhsip. *126
*126). 'Purify My House' does not merely mean keeping it clean of dirt and filth. The real purity and cleanliness of the House of God rests in the fact that in it the name of God alone should be glorified. If someone declares in its sacred precincts that anything other than God is his Lord, his object of worship and adoration, the dispenser of man's needs and requirements, the hearer of man's supplications, then such a person is guilty of desecrating the House of God.
This verse also contains a hint as to the evil-doing of the people of the Quraysh. They boasted that they were the inheritors of the legacy of Abraham and Ishmael, but instead of being faithful to that legacy, they actually trampled over it. So, just as the Children of Israel were excluded from the promise made to Abraham, so were the polytheistic children of Ishmael. (See also n. 125 above - Ed.)