The sultan of Perak has urged Muslims all over the world to reclaim the middle way of Islam, that is, of moderation.

In his special address at the launch of Mohammad Hashim Kamali’s latest book titled ‘The Middle Path of Moderation In Islam’, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah cited a Quranic verse which speaks about how moderation is a moral virtue.

“Let this reminder from the Quran be a timely rallying call for Muslims all over to reclaim the middle way of Islam, which has been lost amongst Muslims,” he said at the event in Petaling Jaya today.

He lamented how the middle way - despite its blessings and benefits to mankind - has always been neglected and also difficult to be achieved.

“This is where the major challenge lies - in the actual behaviour of ourselves, of our leaders and of our communities and our nations,” he said.

Quoting Kamali’s book, Sultan Nazrin said the author had pointed out how the emphasis on keeping to the middle way in Islam had been the norm rather than the exception among prominent Muslim theologians and jurists throughout history.

“In doing so, he provides an important counterbalance to the hysteria felt by non-Muslims, understandably, over Islam today.

“A moral crisis, if you like, partly instigated by the misappropriation of our faith by a small minority of Muslims like the members of Daesh, that self-styled Islamic State (IS).”

On the terrorist organisation - which was responsible for the massacre of civilians in Paris, France and Mali - the sultan said it had indeed gone astray.

“(They) are now regrettably very far from the middle way that the weight of Muslim history as well as our scriptures attests to,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sultan Nazrin in his dissection of the book noted how Kamali had made the effort to explore Shiite scholarship on the subject, even though the Afghan-born scholar himself is a Sunni.

“Kamali was moved by (the late traditional scholar of Sunni Islam) Shaykh Farfour’s advice to engage in this inter-faith exploration and especially because now, at this time, the climate of understanding between the Sunni and Shiite followers of Islam has taken a turn for the worse.

“Yet we are faced with the irony that both sides continually stress the importance of unity; and it is for this very reason that Kamali makes the effort to explore both positions,” he said.

The sultan said what Kamali found was revealing, in that he had shown how Shiite scholarship, in parallel with Sunni scholarship, had actually engaged in a longstanding campaign to moderate religious extremism within their own ranks.

The 320-page book, published by Oxford University Press, is divided into two parts. The first is a theoretical analysis where the idea of wasatiyyah (middle way) is carefully defined, while the second part deals with various practical applications related to this Islamic concept.