section_path: Self-image of the Sunnis/As center of Muslims
section_name: As center of Muslims
paragraph_text: As center of Muslims
  
  Later Sunni scholars also present the Sunnis as the center of Muslim community. The idea already appears to some extent in the Ashʿarite ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, who emphasizes on several dogmatic questions that the Sunnis hold a position that lies in the middle between the positions of the other Islamic groups. An example is the question of predestination (Qadar), in which, according to the Kasb theory, you hold exactly the middle between the two extreme positions of the Jabriyya and the Qadariyya.
  
  The Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), who was otherwise known for his uncompromising attitude, also adhered to this view. He said that the Sunnis represented "the middle among the sects of the Umma " (al-wasaṭ fī firaq al-umma), just as the Islamic Umma is the middle between the other religious communities. He illustrates this with the following examples:
  
  The Hanafi scholar ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1606) continued this idea later. In his anti-Shiite pamphlet Šamm al-alawāriḍ fī ḏamm ar-rawāfiḍ he quotes a tradition according to which ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib said: "Two kinds of people perish on me: the exaggerated lover and the exaggerated hater." He notes that the exaggerated lover is the Rafidites and the exaggerated hater is the Kharijit. The Sunni, on the other hand, loves ʿAlī in high esteem and is thus in the balanced middle (al-wasaṭ allaḏī huwa al-qisṭ). This relates al-Qari to the Qur'anic sura 2: 143, in which it is said that God made the Muslims a community standing in the middle (umma wasaṭ). Since the Sunnis stay away from the exaggeration described in the traditional ʿAlī saying, al-Qārī believes that they are also the actual " Party of ʿAlīs " (šīʿat ʿAlī).