Vyacheslav Ali Polosin

Vyacheslav Ali Polosin – How I came to Islam?

In the name of God, the holder of the eternal and endless mercy!

I grew up in an atheist family but from early childhood believed in mysterious and omnipotent God who would not refuse the ones who turned to Him. During some difficult situations of my youth when my own strength was not sufficient I used to turn in my heart to God for assistance, and the situation turned the better way.

In order to find out the truth about God I applied and was accepted to study at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. There I opened the Bible for the first time, and it made a conflicting impression on me: some passages seemed truly supernatural while in other ones God was set out to destroy most of the nations; included such strange notions as ‘muscle’, ‘hand’, ‘body’, ‘flesh and blood’ of God.

However, there was no real alternative to the communist ideology, aside for the Russian Orthodox Church, in the 1970s in Moscow. After coming to an Orthodox church for the first time at the age of 19, I discovered an ancient tradition, beauty of the hymns praising the Lord and decided to seek real theological knowledge and entered a seminary.
This decision was not a choice of a particular faith, as I had nothing to compare the Orthodoxy with. Instead, it was only a sign of decisive parting from the falsehood of ungodliness as a whole, by means of entering a religious organization whose doors were open to me at the time.

Having studied the postulates of the Christian doctrine at the seminary I became a priest in 1983. For me the priesthood was a symbol of spiritual and intellectual battle with ungodliness; I felt myself to be the warrior of the Lord.

However, while serving at the church I was forced to devote myself to performing various rituals ordered by highly superstitious people instead of to devote myself to the realm of the spiritual and intellectual faith. Even having realized that these rituals at their core did not differ from the pagan traditions, I could not refuse to perform them, as they became obligatory part of church life.

I found myself in the state of inner conflict between my personal faith and public duty. In 1988-1990 my struggle with atheism became a thing of the past. But the focus of the church did not switch towards enlightenment and struggle against superstitions. Instead, the church engulfed itself with construction of buildings and performing profitable cults. Gradually I no longer felt as a warrior of the Lord but as an official wizard expected to perform the rites and spells. I left the priestly ministry in 1991 for this very reason.

In order to find a theological explanation for the existing ritualistic traditions, I started studying ancient Christian sources on history of church, history of church services and history of theology. Thorough study of theology and primary sources led me to serious doubts about the truthfulness of the entire Rome-Byzantium theology which I found to be based on the pagan mysteries of the ancient world.

I realized this fully in 1995, and from that moment I withdrew from participating in all services of the Church. However, the anthropic faith in Jesus Christ, which was taught in the seminary, still prevented me from understanding the simple principle of monotheism. I was not yet aware of the teachings of Islam since the Krachkovskiy’s translation of the Quran simply distorted the meaning of the Divine Revelation to me. All doubts about embracing Islam have left me when I finally encountered the expounding of the Quran and Islamic teachings about Jesus (peace be upon him).

The Merciful and Beneficent God reinforced my convictions, and both my wife and I decided to announce our Islam and publically preach monotheism.