al-Baqara 2:186 — An answer without an intermediary

"When My servants ask you about Me — I am near. I answer the call of the caller when he calls Me."

This verse is unique among the question-and-answer verses of the Qurʾān, and the reason lies in an absence:

When a question is put in the Qurʾān the pattern is almost always the same: "They ask you about… Say: …" There are instances of this a few verses apart in the same sūra — the new moons are asked about, and "say" comes (2/189); what is to be spent is asked about, and "say" comes (2/215).

In this verse there is no "say".

The question was put to the Prophet, but the answer was not given to the Prophet; it was given directly to the one who asked. The intermediary is removed at precisely the place where nearness is the subject. What the sentence says is shown by the way the sentence is built.

The point at which it is placed is meaningful too. The verse stands right in the middle of the rulings on fasting — before and after it, licence, duration, limit. In the middle of the regulations the language of ruling is left for a moment and something else is said: the relationship that is the reason for all these regulations is recalled.

فَإِنِّى قَرِيبٌ — "I am near". And the clause at verse 115 holds here too: this nearness is not spatial. Indeed the sentence speaks not of distance but of answering.