glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Hypocrisy: For the Sufis, the “hypocrite” (munafiq) is not only the one who gives
himself airs of piety in order to impress people, but in a general way, one who is profane,
who does not draw all the consequences that are implied in the Dogma and the Law,
hence the man who is not sincere, since he is neither consequential nor whole; now
Sufism (tasawwuf) is nothing other than sincerity (sidq) and the “sincere” (siddiqun) are
none other than the Sufis. [SVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]
Idealism / Realism: Nothing is more false that the conventional opposition between
“idealism” and “realism”, which insinuates in general that the “ideal” is not “real”, and
inversely; as if an ideal situated outside reality had the smallest value, and as if reality
were always situated on a lower level than what may be called an “ideal”. Anyone who
holds this view is thinking in a quantitative and not in a qualitative mode. The current
meaning of the terms is here in view, and not their specifically philosophical
signification. [LAW, The Ancient Worlds in Perspective]
Ihsan: The Islamic religion is divided into three constituent parts: Iman, Faith, which
contains everything that one must believe; Islam, the Law, which contains everything that
one must do; Ihsan,* operative virtue, which confers upon believing and doing the
qualities that make them perfect, or in other words, which intensify or deepen both faith
and works. Ihsan, in short, is the sincerity of the intelligence and the will: it is our total
adhesion to the Truth and our total conformity to the Law, which means that we must, on
the one hand, know the Truth entirely, not in part only, and on the other hand conform to
it with our deepest being and not only with a partial and superficial will. Thus Ihsan
converges upon esoterism – which is the science of the essential and the total – and is
even identified with it; for to be sincere is to draw from the Truth the maximal
consequences both from the point of view of the intelligence and from that of the will; in
other words, it is to think and to will with the heart, and thus with our whole being, with
all that we are.
Ihsan is right-believing and right-acting, and at the same time it is their quintessence: the
quintessence of right-believing is metaphysical truth, the Haqiqah, and that of rightacting
is the practice of invocation, the Dhikr. Ihsan comprises so to speak two modes,
depending on its application: the speculative and the operative, namely intellectual
discernment and unitive concentration; in Sufi language this is expressed exactly by the
terms Haqiqah^ and Dhikr, or by Tawhid, “Unification,” and Ittihad, “Union.”
(* Literally Ihsan means: “embellishment,” “beautiful activity,” “right-acting,”
“charitable activity”; and let us recall the relationship that exists in Arabic between the
notions of beauty and virtue.
^ It is to be noted that in the word haqiqah, as in its quasi-synonym haqq, the meanings
“truth” and “reality” coincide.) [SVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]
Ihsan comprises many ramifications, but it is quintessential esoterism that obviously
constitutes it most directly. [SVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]
Ihsan (exoterically / esoterically): Ihsan, given that it is necessarily also an exoteric
notion, may be interpreted at different levels and in different ways. Exoterically it is the
faith of the fidiests and the zeal of the ritualists; in which case it is intensity and not
profundity and is thus something relatively quantitative or horizontal compared with
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