 respected brothers and sisters in Islam we begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala God Almighty as He is most worthy and deserving of all praise we ask Allah and we ask Allah alone to forgive us of our sins those that we have committed knowingly and those that we commit unknowingly we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to guide us to prevent us from being misguided and from misguiding others we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to bless His noble Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam to bless His noble companions, His family, and the righteous everywhere Ameen we live in a time certainly here in our own communities here in the United States but the world over where whether it's politics, whether it's the pursuit of science and understanding based on science whether it's identity, identity politics whether it's how we define ourselves individually or collectively as a group we live in a very tribalized society we live in a society where people are more often than not more often than not inclined towards extreme views or circumstances or positions on various incendiary issues as I said whether it's politics or identity and so on and so forth science even and how we look at the pandemic and how we look at the idea of verifiable truths and so on we live in a society of extremes, we live in a time of extremes and Islam proposes a antidote or an alternative to this polarization that we see among humanity and this polarization is not something new it's not something that is just within our own lifetimes but I feel that whether it's the forces of social media and so on that have exacerbated or have made those stark differences or those lines of demarcation and difference extremely stark and people gravitate towards extremes and it is I think within this understanding of humanity this understanding of the human tendency that Allah SWT, God Almighty in the Quran says in Surah Baqarah in the 143rd verse and I mentioned that in particular because I'll come back to that where Allah SWT says Allah says that indeed we have made you a ummah wassata, a middle-most community or a moderate community and you are witnesses you are witnesses over or on humanity for humanity, for mankind as the prophets are witnesses over you as a community, as an ummah and as I mentioned this is found in Surah Baqarah a surah, a chapter that has 286 verses in it and this verse Allah SWT perhaps strategically but certainly by intention places this directly in the middle of that surah underscoring this idea of moderation or balance or equilibrium that is to say a precaution against adopting extreme positions or views but rather adopting the moderate position or middle-most position and I say this because whether we examine our ummah and Allah SWT is using this to present a salient feature of this community, of this ummah how he has made us an ummah wassata a middle-most community a community of as I said moderation and balance and we can look at or examine this idea of moderation and balance or a prevention from going to extremes in various ways various ways to look at what is this idea of wassata of balance or moderation or middle-most is it historical, is it political and so on but I think that if we look at it through various features of how the tradition or how the faith of Islam as a whole and the normative teachings of the faith tradition of our tradition found in the Quran and the prophetic legacy the sunnah of the Prophet SAW define or seek to flesh out this idea of moderation or balance and I want to look at this through various ways in which our faith and our tradition adopts this idea of moderation or balance because especially in today what does it mean we live through an age and certainly even now where it was like where are the moderate voices of Muslims where are the moderate voices that condemn extremism asking or presupposing what it means to be moderate and defining moderation or being moderate as principles or ideas and if you didn't fit that mold then you weren't moderate and it was such a loaded term and it remains very loaded and colluded term so how is it that we ourselves as a community, as an ummah based upon the teaching of our faith tradition how is it that we have defined moderation and a prevention of adopting extremes in any direction how is it that we have defined it based on our own faith tradition rather than having it poised on us this idea of what it means to be a moderate what it means to display or demonstrate moderation the first of these that I want to look at is the balance if you will between law and spirit and what do I mean by that Allah SWT and the Quran or we as believers of minimum 17 times a day recite the following supplication we ask Allah, we beseech Allah in Surah Fatiha in the opening chapter of the Quran to guide us to the straight path the path of those who have Allah's favor upon it not the path of those who have incurred Allah's wrath and anger and not the path of those that have gone extreme and the Mufassirin or have gone astray excuse me and the commentators of the Quran the Mufassirin tell us that what we are seeking refuge from what we are seeking Allah's protection from or to put it differently how we are defining or how the straight path the straight path is defined is by the avoidance or not defined by the characteristics as embodied in certain religious archetypes or certain religious types if you will and according to some commentators it refers to the Jews and Christians the path of those who have incurred Allah's wrath is perhaps best demonstrated by the tendency that is displayed or that we find in the Quran defining or describing Bani Israel for example the Jewish community and this isn't Jew bashing or Christian bashing but rather again defining religious archetypes religious ways how do communities go to extremes and how are we defining ourselves in distinction to those extremes what is the straight path the path that avoids these extremes and so the Quran is replete and is abundant in its descriptions of early communities specifically Bani Israel the Jewish community and the Christian community and as the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that you will follow the ways of those that came before you as a sandal follows another so when you're walking one sandal one foot follows another that's how the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam defined or warned us that we would fall into these traps these traps of the Jewish community as is demonstrated in the Quran and the Christian community and those extremes are defined by this idea of a extreme view on law and spirit so for example when it comes to Bani Israel we find in Surat al-Baqarah a narrative or an anecdote that is presented that the Jews were asked to not engage in any type of commercial or business or work during their day of Sabbath the day of Sabbath was meant to be a day of observing one's religious duties and not engaging in commercial practice not working and so on this was the way in which the Sabbath was defined to the Jewish community and so the Quran speaks of a village of fishermen or a village where fishing was the primary source of income or commercial enterprise and so these fishermen again in observance of Sabbath were not to fish on the day of the Sabbath but on that day Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tests that village, that community by making the fish abundant in the water literally jumping out of the water like this is a test from Allah will you obey the Sabbath or will you give in to your prophet P-R-O-F-I-T will you give in to the temptation to engage in fishing and so the villagers the fishermen they devise a way in which to avoid the specifics or the letter of the law by casting the nets out the night before and then going back after the Sabbath and then collecting the nets and so they would have not engaged in fishing during the day of the Sabbath by laying out these nets prior the night before and to collect it after the Sabbath was over at sundown and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran that this was a way of going astray of incurring Allah's wrath because while they had skirted around the strictures of the law or the specifics of the law the letter of the law as we say the letter of the law what they failed to do was to practice or to live in accordance with the spirit and the essence of the law yes you didn't engage in fishing on the day of the Sabbath or in the hours of the Sabbath but you violated what the test or what the Sabbath was all about by trying to circumvent by trying to go around or finding loopholes in the legal ordinance or the legal scripture or stricture by finding loopholes in the law and so you resigned yourself or you said okay I'm not violating God's law or commandment of the Sabbath because I haven't actually engaged in fishing but you violated the spirit of the law and it is this idea of balance between law and spirit that we as a community are being called upon to practice in our daily lives that is to say that yes there is the letter of the law and the letter of the law is important and following the letter of the law is absolutely a part of what we are being called upon by Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala to follow but at the same time in the pursuit of practicing the letter of the law let us not forget what the essence of that law is let us not forget what the spirit of that law is so when we come to disputes or differences of opinion that we find in our very broad Islamic law let us not violate the spirit and the essence of what the community and the integrity of the community by dividing and argumentation and fitan and discord based upon these legal disputes and we have how we may be following the letter of the law or as we define the law what we are doing is violating the essence and the spirit of solitude the acceptance of differences of opinion and we can find examples of this in our own communities the way in which we exercise or the way in which we argue about the letter of the law and the spirit and the essence of what Allah SWT is asking and calling us to do and so the adoption of a moderate approach to the law and the spirit the letter of the law is important but that is not to violate the greater spirit of what Allah SWT is defining asking us to do or not do with regards to following that particular legal concept or idea so this idea of again being a balanced or moderate community as it comes to law as it comes to the way in which we approach our own legal tradition and then last for the sake of time the balance that Allah SWT the Prophet SAW constantly underscored throughout our legal throughout our tradition of Islam throughout our faith tradition is a balance between the various parts of our human nature and what do I mean by that we as human beings are a composite are a combination of a mind and soul we have an intellect but we also have a spirit and a heart we also have the ability to rationalize but we also have the ability to feel emotions to feel that idea of being in composite of a mind, body and soul that is to say that we recognize that yes we have we have spiritual needs and at the same time we have physical needs and what our tradition throughout the corpus of our tradition throughout all of Islamic law legal tradition all of our faith in the way in which we exercise it we find that we try or we attempt to strike a balance between the needs of the ruh of the spirit needs for intellectual pursuit and understanding and rationalization and the needs of our physical bodies so for example to give you a simple example that we find that if the time for prayer has come and one is has to answer the call of nature but chooses to pray and not respond to the call of nature and their anxious throughout their prayer and so on or if the time comes for prayer and you're hungry and a meal has been prepared for example and all you can think of the prayer is to answer the very physical need that you have to satisfy or to satiate your hunger that it is not forbidden perhaps but it is highly undesirable that it is detestable to not answer the call of