First of all, we must say what Islam is as such. Very often, when people talk about Islam, they start talking about it as a religion. The word "religion" means a religious organization, a church or a sect, a religious organization where people gather to pray and solve some spiritual issues.

In fact, this is not entirely true. Islam in this sense is quite far from religion in our traditional view. This is very important to remember, because in our country a conversation often becomes a conversation between two deaf people. When we talk to Muslims, Muslims tell us one thing, we tell them another. And we cannot understand each other, if only because we put completely different concepts into the same words.

Recently, I received another proposal from a kind man to convert to Islam, and an explanation of why this person himself converted to Islam and why this is the true faith. This man explained to me that Islam is the true faith because Muslims do not drink, do not take drugs, all their girls are virgins, debauchery is not allowed, and therefore Islam is a very good religion, the only hope for all progressive humanity.

Although this, in fact, is not true, at least because 80% of heroin, excuse me, is grown in Islamic countries... But the essence is that a person perceives religion as a kind of project of earthly order. And this, by the way, is a very bright line. If we visit Islamic Internet sites – islam.ru, for example, or koran.ru – we will notice that the overwhelming majority of the materials that are presented there are materials on how to arrange life: materials about oriental cuisine, oriental bazaar; what are the norms of Sharia on the length of the beard; Sharia norms about the length of underpants or whatever, that's the kind of thing!

That is, this is a kind of attempt at a global world order based on the authority of God. In this sense, Islam can be compared not with the church, Orthodox or Catholic, but with such projects as National Socialist, Communist construction, and current globalization. It is precisely the project of creating a certain kingdom of God on Earth by earthly means under the protection of the Lord God.

Moreover, for a Muslim, the separation between religion and politics is inconceivable in principle. This is very important to understand, this is the feature that is a characteristic feature of Islam as such. We can imagine an Orthodox living in America, for example, among the Papuans of New Guinea, among the same Islam. That is, Orthodoxy as such, encompassing the entire life of a person, assumes that a person can coexist with a certain foreign order.

Moreover, for the Orthodox, this state is normal, because we know that the Kingdom of Christ is "not of this world," as our Lord said. Therefore, an Orthodox Christian can remain Orthodox, even in an anti-Christian situation. That is, for us, of course, it is not normal that this situation exists, but, alas, it is, apparently, a necessary evil until the end of the world.

As St. Justin the Philosopher said, "We know that persecution will engulf the Church to the very end, until the Lord returns and sets us all free." Therefore, persecution is normal for us.

Why? Because we are a foreign body, we are representatives of the Kingdom of God on Earth. We feel ourselves and are, well, if you like, saboteurs sent into enemy territory. Therefore, there are more or less convenient situations, but for us this world is a place in which we can exist, but at the same time we do not hope that this world will become the Kingdom of God by our own efforts.

We hope that God Himself will intervene and remake the entire universe.

For Islam, this is not the case. For Islam, there is service to God, which is manifested mainly in the Sharia, the law. This law embraces the religious life of a person, and his spiritual, spiritual and physical life, and his social life, regulates life in his family and in everything else. That is, Sharia presupposes a certain global project, and a project that, most interestingly, almost does not include the Lord God Himself.

This is the cardinal difference with Orthodoxy: if in Orthodoxy everything is done by the power of the Lord Almighty, then in Islam the intervention of the Lord God is considered such air.

I will try to explain. The fact is that from the point of view of Islam, in general, any actions of a person, or an angel, or an atom are done personally by God God – Allah. And because of this, such a paradoxical phenomenon arises that a person must do everything himself. Due to the fact that there is too much God, if you will, it turns out that there is almost no place for human freedom, and the small piece of freedom that man has left – freedom of choice – is the only tool with which something can be done.

This is a paradox, but it determines the entire worldview of Muslims.