Lev Tolstoy ��Please regard me as a Muslim
�� The great Russian writer and thinker who contributed a lot
to the Russian literature and history is more famous as a writer, his
philosophical views and works that reflect his ideas of God, soul,
knowledge, love, the meaning of life, etc. are much less known. The
continuing quest for the meaning of life, the moral ideal, the covert
general regularities of existence as well as his spiritual and social
criticism run through all his creative work.
Since the 1870-ies he pays more and more attention to the subjects of
death, sin, penance, and moral revival. His extraordinary way of
thinking was in most cases incomprehensible to the Russian society of
those days. He was excommunicated and committed to anathema, his friends
and acquaintances turned away from him.
In 1910, at the age of 81, Lev Tolstoy left home and died on the way to
the station �Astapovo�.
Why was the end of his life so sad and where was he going after leaving
home?
Perhaps, some of his letters will throw light upon it. Here is what he
wrote about the Church: �The world was doing what it wished to do
and was letting the Church keep pace with it providing as good
explanations of the meaning of life as it could possibly think of. The
world was setting its own mode of life which was entirely different form
the teaching of Christ, and the Church was inventing allegories which
would suggest that people who violated the law of Christ lived in
keeping with it.
As a result, the world started living the life which was worse than
that of pagans, and the Church came to approve of it. Moreover, it
claimed that such life was what the teaching of Christ consists in�.
Yasnaya Polyana, March, 1909 The Russian woman who married the Muslim E.
Vekilov, wrote to Tolstoy that her sons wanted to convert to Islam, and
asked for his advice. This is what the writer answered her: �As far
as the preference of Islam to Orthodoxy is concerned�, I can fully
sympathize with such conversion.
To say this might be strange for me who values the Christian ideals and
the teaching of Christ in their pure sense more that anything else, I do
not doubt that Islam in its outer form stands higher than the Orthodox
Church. Therefore, if a person is given only two choices: to adhere to
the Orthodox Church or Islam, any sensible person will not hesitate
about his choice, and anyone will prefer Islam with its acceptance of
one tenet, single God and His Prophet instead such complex and
incomprehensible things in theology as the Trinity, redemption,
sacraments, the saints and their images, and complicated services��
Yasnaya Polyana, March, 15th,
1909 We can adduce another letter of his which explains his world
outlook which formed as a result of his long painful search for the
truth. �I would be very glad if you were of the same faith with me.
Just try to understand what my life is. Any success in life- wealth,
honour, glory- I don�t have these. My friends, even my family are
turning away from me. Some- liberals and aesthetes- consider me to be
mad or weak- minded like Gogol; others- revolutionaries and radicals-
consider me to be a mystic and a man who talks too much; the officials
consider me to be a malicious revolutionary; the Orthodox consider me to
be a devil. I confess that it is hard for me� And therefore,
please, regard me as a kind Muslim and all will be fine�.
Yasnaya Polyana, April, 1884
(Note:
There is no such thing as Mohammadan thus i have done the corrections and
replaced it with Muslim as it should be)