The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam — Page 107
lest He should die before them. 101 Then He said: Proclaim that He is Allah, the Single. He begets not, nor is He begotten; and there is no one who is His equal or like unto Him. To believe in the Unity of God correctly, without the least deviation, is the justice that is due from a man towards his Maker. We have set out the moral teachings of Islam from the Holy Quran, the basic principle of which is that there should be neither excess nor deficiency; it is the characteristic of a moral quality that it does not exceed or fall short of its appropriate limit. It is obvious that virtue lies in the middle of two extremes. Only that habit which seeks to establish itself in the middle promotes a high moral quality. To recognize the proper place and occasion is itself a middle. For instance, if a farmer does his sowing too early or too late, he departs from the middle. Virtue and truth and wisdom are the middle and the middle is appropriateness; in other words truth is always in the middle of two opposing falsehoods. There is no doubt that watchfulness for the proper occasion keeps a person in the middle. Keeping to the middle in relation to God means that in expounding Divine attributes one should not lean towards negating Divine attributes nor describe God as resembling material things. This is the