And the more modernism spreads and the secularization of life increases...

And the more modernism spreads and the secularization of life increases, the more does this concern and awareness grow and even change in nature and kind.6 A Muslim in a traditional village in northern Syria or in Isfahan is aware of the presence of Christianity in a manner which is by nature different from the concern of a college student in America or Europe for, let us say, Buddhism.

Hence, the constant occupation of a large number of scholars and theologians in the West and also in modernized parts of the rest of the world with the study of other religions, which is sometimes called the history of religions, sometimes comparative religion, and sometimes by other names,7 and the endless debate that continues about the appropriate method or methods to follow in the study of this crucial subject.8 From this pressing demand to have the meaning of the multiplicity of sacred forms explained,