Understanding Islam

“Islam is the meeting between God as such and man as such… Islam confronts what is immutable in God with what is permanent in man.” These are the opening words of what has become a classic work on Islam, perhaps the most misunderstood of the great Revelations. And yet the purpose of this book “is not so much to give a description of Islam as to explain… why Moslems believe in it.” Both Westerners unfamiliar with Islam and Moslems seeking a deeper understanding of the basis of faith will be struck by Schuon’s masterful elucidation of the spiritual world of Islam. Schuon’s foundation is always the intrinsic nature of things rather than any confessional point of view. This perspective opens up new avenues of approach and surprising insights into the “five pillars” of faith, the Quran, the Sunna, the Prophet and the esoteric dimension which in examining a given religious framework readily draws upon parallels and concepts from other traditions, especially that of the Vedanta. For “what is needed in our time, and indeed in every age remote from the origins of Revelation, is… to rediscover the truths written in an eternal script in the very substance of man’s spirit.”