“Guide us” means: make us firm in guidance if we are a society; increase us in guidance if we are a community; make us successful in guidance if we are a tribe; give us guidance if we are a group.

Also, according to the verse, “Who gives unto every thing [that exists] its true nature and form, and thereupon guides it,”(20:50) Allah guided us by giving us external and inner senses; then He guided us by placing evidences in the outside world and in ourselves; then He guided us by sending prophets and revealing books. And then He guided us with the greatest guidance, which was that by removing the veils from the truth, it appeared as truth and falsehood appeared as falsehood.

O Lord! Show us what is indeed the truth and empower us to follow it, and show us the false for what it is, and enable us to avoid it.

► 6 ◄

“The Straight Path (al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm)”

Know that the Straight Path is justice, consisting of the blending and summary of wisdom (ḥikma), chastity (‘iffa), and courage (shajā‘a), which are the mean or middle way of the three degrees of man’s three powers.

To explain: when Allah (May He be exalted and glorified!) housed spirit (rūḥ) in man’s body, which is changing, needy, and exposed to dangers, He deposited three powers in it to ensure its continued existence.

The First: The power of animal appetites to attract benefits.

The Second: The power of savage passion to repulse harmful and destructive things.

The Third: The power of angelic intellect to distinguish between benefit and harm.

However, since His wisdom necessitated that humanity should achieve perfection through the mystery of competition, Allah placed no innate limitation on these powers, as He did on those of other living beings. He did however limit them through the Shari‘a, for it prohibits excess (ifrāṭ) and deficiency (tafrīṭ) and enjoins the middle way (wasaṭ). This is what is inferred by the verse “Pursue then the right course as you have been bidden.”(11:112) In the absence of any innate limitation, three degrees arise in the three powers: the degree of deficiency, which is negligence; the degree of superabundance, which is excess; and the middle way, which is justice.

Thus, deficiency in the power of intellect is stupidity and foolishness, and its excess, perfidious deception and over-meticulousness in trivialities, and its middle way is wisdom. “He who has been given wisdom, has been given great good.”(2:269)