“And We made this House (Ka’bah) a resort for mankind and a place of security, commanding people: ‘Take the station of Abraham as a permanent place for Prayer,’ and enjoined Abraham and Ismael: ‘Purify My House for those who walk around it, and those who abide in devotion, and those who bow, and who prostrate themselves (in Prayer)’.”
(The Qur’ān – 2:125)
The Qur’ān here specifies that God’s promise of the conferment of leadership applied only to those of Abraham’s offspring who were righteous, and that the wrong-doers were naturally excluded. This also makes it clear that, just as the promise did not apply to the misguided Israelites, it did not apply to the polytheistic Ishmaelites.
‘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.
The people of the Quraysh 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.