Sirat al-Mustaqim: The Measure of Uprightness
This book is the fourth in the six-book Balance series: Measure · The Human · Breaking · Meaning · Life · Center. The books refer to one another; it is best to read them in order.
The idea of the straight path
In the first three books of the Balance series, we spoke of the measure in the heavens in Measure, of the scale within the human being in The Human, and of the place where that scale breaks in Breaking. This book speaks of the scale of the Sufis. In their language, balance is not a concept but a journey.
A Muslim repeats the same prayer at least forty times a day:
Guide us to the straight path.
Al-Fatihah 1:6 (meaning)
This prayer is curious. The one who has found the path asks for the path anew every day. So the straight path is not something found once and put in a pocket. It is something that must be found again at every step. Uprightness, istiqama, is not a destination but a way of walking.
The word sirat means a wide, open, walkable road. "Mustaqim" means perfectly straight, without a bend. But in descriptions of the hereafter, the sirat is mentioned with another face as well: one narration says it is thinner than a hair and sharper than a sword. (Muslim, Iman 302) The same word carries both breadth and narrowness. The straight path is wide for the one who walks it, narrow for the one who veers right and left.
Excess and deficiency
Books of Sufism and ethics seek virtue between two extremes. One extreme is ifrat: going too far, overflowing the measure. The other is tafrit: falling short, slackening. Courage turns into recklessness in excess, into cowardice in deficiency. Generosity, into waste in excess, into stinginess in deficiency.
Worship is not exempt from this rule either. Our Prophet says:
The religion is ease. Whoever makes the religion hard, the religion will overpower him. So keep to what is right, draw near, and rejoice.
al-Bukhari, Iman 29
In another hadith there is a sentence repeated three times: "Those who go to extremes are ruined." (Muslim, Ilm 7) Excess spoils even a good thing. If a wayfarer sets out never to sleep at night and never to eat by day, after a while he has neither night nor day left. He is stranded on the road. To say it with the line from the video "Kıyamet": he is both on the road and stuck on the road.
Moderation and uprightness
Moderation, i'tidal, is standing in the middle of the two extremes. Uprightness, istiqama, is to keep walking in that middle. Moderation is a balance; uprightness is that balance kept with constancy.
So be upright as you have been commanded, and those who have turned back with you. And do not transgress.
Hud 11:112 (meaning)
According to a narration, our Prophet said, "Surah Hud has made me grey." (al-Tirmidhi, Tafsir 56) Scholars mostly link the reason to this verse. As if the command to be upright were the heaviest burden. Because uprightness asks not for a day, but for a lifetime.
We have made you a middle community.
Al-Baqarah 2:143 (meaning)
The root of the word "wasat" is middle. But it does not mean ordinary, as "vasat" has come to mean in Turkish; it means the most balanced, the most just. The pearl at the middle of a necklace is the most precious one. To be in the middle is not to stay at the average no matter what, but to find the truest place between the two extremes.
The first answer to this book's question can be given here: when a person places himself at the center, he takes his own measure for the measure. The one who takes his own measure for the measure calls his excess courage and his deficiency humility. Uprightness is knowing that the measure comes from outside, from above.