This renowned book, which has been translated into over a dozen languages, has attracted much attention over the years. Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr says that it is Schuon’s “most important work on Islam and [from] among the books written by a Westerner on Islam, [this is] the one most universally accepted by Muslims.” Islamic Quarterly has called Understanding Islam a “masterpiece of comparative religion,” and one of the most respected writers on Sufism, the late Professor Annemarie Schimmel of Harvard University, wrote that this book “shows the essence of Islam.… One often finds passages [in it] which touch the heart.” In its four chapters, “Islam,” The Quran,” “The Prophet,” and “The Way,” Schuon surveys the major dimensions of the Islamic tradition, from its most outward forms to its most inward spiritual path, Sufism. One of the book’s major goals is to answer many of the questions Christians have concerning Islam, a goal which is even more important today than when Understanding Islam was first written. This new edition features a new translation, an extensive appendix of previously unpublished materials, and detailed editor’s notes by Patrick Laude to aid readers.
“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 illumination of the spiritual world of Islam. As always, the basis of Schuon’s approach is the “nature of things” rather than any particular theological point of view. This perspective opens up new avenues of understanding and surprising insights into the “five pillars” of faith, the Quran, the Sunna, the Prophet, and the esoteric dimension (Sufism) which is the kernel of Moslem spirituality. As Schuon explains, “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.”
