al-Baqara 2:143 — The middle community

"Thus We have made you a middle community, that you may be witnesses to people, and that the Messenger may be a witness to you."

وَسَط — root w-s-ṭ. The word carries two senses at once, and in Arabic the two are inseparable:

• Middle. What stands between two extremes, balanced, not running to excess.
• Most valuable, choice. In Arabic "wasaṭ al-qawm" means not the middle of a people but the best of them. The most valuable stone of a necklace is at its centre; the most honoured branch of a tribe is the "middle" branch.

The two senses are not together by accident. In the logic of the Arabic language the centre is at the same time where the value lies — the extremes are a being flung out, the middle is soundness. In Turkish the borrowed word vasat has drifted the other way and come to mean "ordinary, average"; and the usual English renderings show the same drift — "middle" slides into "middling", "average" into "mediocre". Anyone who reads the verse through such a word understands the opposite of what it says.

This expression joins with the measure we set up at the last verse of al-Fātiḥa: there the road was described as being far from two extremes — those who do not act on their knowledge, and those who stray with effort. The middle community is the name of the community standing on that road.

شُهَدَآءَ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِ — "witnesses to people". The task is defined not as superiority but as testimony. A witness is one who reports what he has seen; he does not himself pass judgement, he provides the basis for judgement.

And how the testimony is to be borne is hidden in the word itself: a witness must be visible. A community's testimony is borne not by what it says but by the state in which it is seen.