“As the mother of all the prophets and the source ground of all sacred forms, the Holy Virgin has her place of honor in Islam, even though she belongs a priori to Christianity; therefore, she forms a kind of link between these two religions, which have in common the desire to give universal validity to the monotheism of Israel.”
– Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998) is widely regarded as one of the most important writers on the philosophy of religion of the 20th century. He is considered a leading exponent of that school of thought called Sophia perennis (“everlasting wisdom”), which contains the timeless and universally valid principles underlying the various doctrines, symbolism, sacred art, and spiritual exercises of the world’s religions.
In this work, Frithjof Schuon compares Christianity and Islam and also considers confessions within these world religions: Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and Shiism. In doing so, he avoids superficial equations in the field of exotericism; inner unity can only exist in the heart of the religions, in their esotericism.
The book is addressed to people who are searching for a spiritually grounded understanding of the world and their own lives, an understanding that goes beyond the answers that modern sciences or religions understood only in exoteric terms can give. It is able to lead to liberating insights and deep certainty.