Avoid Extremes of Laxity & Strictness

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Avoid Extremes of Laxity & Strictness

The inner reality of veneration for a Divine Law is to follow it with neither excessive license nor excessive strictness. The goal is the straight path that leads the one who travels it to God. But there is not one of God’s commandments without two ways of approach to the devil: one by deficiency, the other by excess. And it makes no difference which of the two errors overtakes the servant: they appear in his heart as equals.

—Ibn al-Qayyim [d. 751H/1350CE]

(Read on pg 15, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, The Invocation of God. The Islamic Texts Society. UK:2000.)

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