Ethics of the Moderate Educator in Islamic Education: The Tarbawi Reading of The Qur’anic Verses on Tawassut

Abstract

Globalization and the growing complexities of modern pressures have resulted in rapid social change, with moral decline and the erosion of moderate values accompanying it. This qualitative study investigates the moral character of a moderate educator in Islamic education based on the tawassuṭ verses of the Qurʾān and identifies the strategies used by the moderate educator to instill moderate morals in learners in the modern era. This research employs library research and a content-analysis approach to interpret five Qurʾānic appearances of wasaṭan and its derivatives, QS al-Baqarah [2]:143 and 238, QS al-Māʾidah [5]:89, QS al-Qalam [68]:28, and QS al-ʿĀdiyāt [100]:5, in the two authoritative exegeses, HAMKA’s Tafsīr al-Azhar and Wahbah al-Zuḥaylī’s al-Tafsīr al-Munīr. The analysis produces a fourfold typology of the moderate educator’s morals: balance (tawāzun), justice (ʿadl), steadfastness (istiqāmah) and tolerance (tasāmuḥ). It further argues that these four virtues are not only taught through generic pedagogy but structure a coherent instructional cycle, planning, implementation, evaluation and reflection, in which each virtue governs a specific pedagogic function across the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. The contribution of this study is an exegetically grounded, verse-anchored account of the moderate educator that complements the largely policy- and curriculum-oriented literature on moderation in Islamic education.