“Whenever you find people in the Ummah going to excess in their beliefs/practices, the scholars will try to redress it by going to excess.”-Sidi Ahmed Zarruq. For example Ibn Al Jawzi wrote a book during his time about the excesses of sufi practices. His book was extreme but nevertheless a catalyst for bringing people back to the middle path.
I thought this was pretty profound and I have always thought about this. God creates movements that seem to be opposing one another within one religion but perhaps they are the poles by which the majority of people are sustained in the middle.
