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The Balance
One of the key philosophical concepts of Islam is that of the balance. Allah has created everything in perfect balance, but over time this balance is lost as a result of our collective actions. The task for humanity, and first and foremost the believers, is to re-establish the balance. Islam thus avoids excesses and extremism and has in the Qur’an been described as the middle way belonging to a moderate community. The history of Muslim societies shows various movements which arose as counter-balance and in response to the particular direction society was going at a given time in history. It is therefore short-sighted to claim that one or the other train of thought is the only legitimate one. They are facets of a mosaic, and each of them had an important contribution to make as interpretations of a given set of prevalent circumstances. As we progress through human history, the accumulated wealth of the answers humanity found to the problems it faced should enable us to learn from past experiences and fine-tune our future responses to human dilemmas.
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