Your turning your faces in prayer towards the east and the west is not piety: but the pious is he who believeth in God and the Last Day, and in the angels, and the Scripture, and the prophets, and who giveth money, notwithstanding his love of it, to relations and orphans, and to the needy and the son of the road,[165] and to the askers and for the freeing of slaves, and who performeth prayer and giveth the [appointed] alms, and those who perform their covenant when they covenant, and the patient in adversity and affliction and in the time of violence. These are they who have been true: and these are they who fear God.
(ii. 172.)
LXVIII.
†He only shall visit the temples of God who believeth in God and the Last Day, and observeth prayer, and payeth the [appointed] alms, and dreadeth none but God: for these are among the rightly-guided.
(ix. 18.)
LXIX.
O ye who have believed, make not your alms of no effect by reproach and harm, like him who expendeth his wealth to make a vain show unto men, and believeth not in God and the Last Day. For his likeness is as the likeness of a smooth stone upon which was earth, and a violent rain hath fallen upon it, and left it smooth and hard. [Such] cannot have aught that they have gained, and God directeth not the unbelieving people.
And the likeness of those who expend their wealth from a desire of God’s being pleased, and from assurance on their part,[166] is as the likeness of a garden upon a hill, on which a violent rain hath fallen, and it hath produced its fruit twofold: and if a violent rain fall not upon it, a gentle rain falleth.
(ii. 266, 267.)