The
Middle
Way

You know

the Islamic way of life, the Deen,

is not only known as the 'Straight Path',

it is also the 'Middle Way'.

But with what seems to be extreme behaviour so often associated with Islam nowadays,

it might be an idea to consider

why the 'Middle Way' was always thought to be

an appropriate name for the Deen.

It has always been considered

that the inner reality of veneration for the Divine Law,

the Will of God,

is to follow it with neither excessive license

nor obsessive strictness.

The goal is the straight path

that leads whoever travels it to God,

but whenever we try to interpret God's Will for ourselves

there are two directions that will take us away from the path.

As Ibn Qayyim puts it,

there is not one of God's commandments

without two ways of drawing close to the Devil instead,

one being deficiency

and the other excess.

And it makes no difference which of the two errors overtakes the servant,

they appear in the heart as equals,

available to be chosen

in whatever way suits the servant's inclinations.

For those who are inclined towards ease and license,

the Devil will tempt them in that way,

slowing them,

sitting them down,

and afflicting them with laziness,

sloth and inactivity.

This way they enter through the door of interpretation

which is opened in the direction of vain hope and other illusions,

until they perhaps abandon the commandment entirely.

So from setting out on the straight path with the best of intentions,

trusting in God, relying on God's Mercy and Forgiveness,

by following their inclinations towards looseness,

laziness and self-indulgence,

little by little they can drift further and further from the path,

and even if they don't entirely reject their Islam,

perhaps their Islamic practice gets reduced to little more than

the occasional Bismillah

before eating dinner.

And with each lazy step that we take away from the path,

we become accustomed to that state

as normal and acceptable,

and inclined to do even less.

And with each step further and further away

we lose the benefits of our practice

and see even less reason to apply ourselves with any more effort than we are doing.

And that way our Deen can easily become little more than

following a cultural dress code.

But for those who are inclined to be

more stringent in their approach to following rules,

if the Devil find vigilance, activity and energy in them,

they will be tempted in a different way,

being spurred on to ever greater efforts.

The Devil will whisper

'This is not enough for you.

You can do better than this.

You should accomplish more than others,

and if they relax you will not'.

And this temptation is even more subtle

than the temptation of ever more laxity,

because it follows the good intention

to follow the Deen with vigilance,

but encourages thoughts of superiority

over those who do less.

This way our approach to the Deen

can step by step lose its purity of intention

and become mixed up with feelings of spiritual pride,

arrogance and vanity.

But whereas laziness may well be accompanied

to a certain extent

by feelings of guilt from deep inside,

the temptation of strictness of approach,

tends to also tempt us to be

much more self-satisfied with our efforts,

as we are always feeling 'safer'

when we are a little more strict with ourselves.

But if each step we take

leads us further in the direction of 'safety' through severity,

each step just leads us further in the same direction,

and our path is no longer straight,

but a spiral winding in upon itself

and never going anywhere.

So in each case the Devil urges us to wander from the path

through an excess of one kind or another,

either laxity or severity,

but in each case the aim is the same,

to guide the servant away from the straight path

to get lost in their own inclinations and preferences.

But there is also

a common hybrid temptation between the two

for those who like to think one thing and do another.

Some of us like to combine

the sense of superiority of the latter

with the laziness of the former,

which can be easily done with a little self-delusion.

It is possible to approach our 'Ibadat

by only thinking of it in terms of severity,

the 'safest of the safe' approach

which defines our religious practice with a demand for such extreme rigour

that it becomes impossible.

And as the perfection of what we demand of ourselves

is therefore unattainable,

that inevitably justifies

abandoning the attempt altogether.

So it's not that we see ourselves as lazy,

but we still end up doing nothing.

And as Ibn Qayyim says of these various temptations,

many of us are afflicted

and there is no deliverance for us

except through deeper knowledge, and deeper faith,

and developing the strength to resist temptation

and to keep to the middle way.

It may be true or not,

but there is a tale of a sheikh

who was sitting somewhere giving spiritual guidance

to those who came and asked for help,

and one day two people came with the same problem,

and to the surprise of the sheikh's students

he gave each supplicant

completely different advice.

When asked about this he said

'If you see a blind person in the distance,

trying to walk down a straight path,

and if you see them straying right

you shout "Go Left Go Left",

and if you see them straying left

you shout "Go Right Go Right"'.

May God help us all to stay on the Middle Way,

and stray neither to the left nor to the right.