Tolstoy\'s Advice Leo Tolstoy Was a Russian

Tolstoy's Advice

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer most famous for his works of fiction such as War and Peace, which discuss the importance of the latter and the hope for the complete eradication of the former. Among his many non-fiction writings is the book A Confession and Other Religious Writings wherein he writes about his own chronic depression and his search for a religion which could give him inner peace. Tolstoy had lived his whole life without fear of starvation and yet he realized that he was not nearly as happy as the peasants that he saw living in the village near his family home. He determined to reexamine his life and to reevaluate the things that were important. What he was able to finally conclude was that the road to happiness had everything to do with understanding, cooperation and peace. If Leo Tolstoy were alive today and able to see the current relationship between the United States and the Islamic world, he would have much to say about what the government of the U.S. should do in order to improve its relationship with the othered group.

The United States has had an aggressive relationship with the people of the Islamic world for quite some time. Since the 1960s, a steady increase in radicalization of viewpoints have led to increased friction culminating with the War on Terror starting September of 2001, following the attacks on the United States by fundamentalists who claimed to represent the Muslim religion. It must be noted that the religion does not promote or support violence of any kind and the terrorist who claim to be acting because of their religious views are doing so falsely. However, because of their claims, a large percentage of the American population has developed anger and suspicion of all Muslim people, whether or not those persons have had anything to do with terrorism or if they even harbor negative opinions of the United States. For decades, the relationship with the United States and Islamic people in the Middle East have been stressed by a variety of things, including the United States support of Israel and the constant friction between nations over the issue of oil distribution and purchase.

The majority of A Confession and Other Religious Writings has to do with Tolstoy and his reunification with his own Christianity, but the findings that he determines can have a large meaning which can be applied to the relationship between the United States and the Islamic people. Part of the conflict between the two groups is the feeling of superiority that each feels they have over the other group. As a young man, Tolstoy believed himself to be superior to some of his countrymen because of his intelligence and social standing. He wrote: "From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what" (8). Those of the United States feel that they are in both the moral and ethical right in their behaviors towards the Muslim people. In the same fashion, Islamic peoples believe themselves superior to the citizens of the United States. Tolstoy makes it clear that this belief in one group's superiority over anyone else is completely false. In order to reach a lasting peace, the two factions need to understand and accept that the two groups each have a different view of life and that neither is more accurate or correct than the other.

Besides false superiority or inferiority, another component of the dynamic between the United States and the Islamic people that Tolstoy would comment on is the idea about the place of religion in a person's life. As stated above, the terrorist groups who have attacked the United States claim to be committing acts of violence because of their religion. This has led to a large percentage of the American population erroneously equating the Muslim religion with terrorism and other assorted acts of violence. Undoubtedly, Leo Tolstoy would ask that people really examine the Islamic religion and not to blindly accept the version of the religion that the media and the terrorists represent. Tolstoy wrote:

It has never occurred before that the ruling and more educated minority, which has the chief influence on the masses, not only disbelieved in the existing religion, but was certain that in its time religion was no longer necessary at all, and that it taught those who doubted the truth of the accepted faith not some other, more rational and comprehensible religion that that existing, but even persuaded them that religion in general had outlived its time, and had become not only a useless but even a harmful organ of social life, something like the appendix of the caecum in the human organism (44).