A letter to Kurt from the Prophet

EuropeNews 30 August 2009
By Farshad Kholghi

Note:
I was on my way to Skanderborg to attend the opening of an exhibition of pictures by Kurt Westergaard when I was stopped by an elderly gentleman. He handed me a letter explaining that it was a letter from a prophet to the caricaturist. The letter read as follows:

Dear Kurt

I hope you are well and enjoying life. I do not know if you know, but I have been dead for many years. In spite of that, I am well, considering the circumstances. Unfortunately I am not - as many believe - surrounded by 72 virgins. This thing about the virgins was just something I made up in order to motivate my fellow fighters.

It is always hard to motivate others to die for oneself. For this reason, I had to come up with a little white hallal-lie, promising that everything I claimed to be haram or unclean here on Earth would be given them by God in great abundance, such as wine and women. Obviously, they had to die first. It was quite fortunate that Hitler didn't come up with the same trick, for otherwise he would most certainly have won the war. Oh, mentioning Hitler: He lives in the basement of my house and follows the career of Ahmadinejad with great interest.

So here I am – unfortunately – along with all the radical mullahs, ragged and bloodied terrorists, Lenin, Stalin and all the other useful idiots, who for some unfathomable reasons love the mullahs. I fear for my life. For they are much like Danish converts – void of humour and even more fanatical than myself in my wild prophet-days, where I rode a camel to chop the head off all those poets who would ridicule my poorly told stories.

Anyway, I am writing because I wanted to tell you a few things. First and foremost: Thank you for that wonderful caricature! That was hilarious as well as clever. I was laughing out loud when I saw it. But the others, the dead imams and the living dead known as the Danish cultural 'elite', was not laughing along. They considered your drawing as well as my laughter blasphemous, and tried to kill me in my own name, merely because I was laughing over the caricature. God came to my rescue, and now I, too, am under protection.

I know that it will puzzle you that I like the caricature. You are right. I am not known for having great sense of humour among prophets. Yet, I must admit that I can't help an uncontrolled laughter when I hear Uffe Ellemann [retired Danish politician], or, as I call him, Uffe Allahman, talk of freedom. Or when I hear Abdul Wahid Petersen speak. Quite honestly. What on earth is the sense of this? A mullah from Jutland?

Anyway, now that lots of bearded amoebae, with or without scarf, have given their view on the matter, I think it is about time that I express my own feelings. I do this once and for all and for Allah. My feeling are neither hurt nor wounded. And you know why, Kurt? Because I, in contrast with my hysterical and fundamentalist followers, have managed to change with the times.

Still, there are many who consider my prophetic actions 1400 years past to be perfect. God knows why – or then, God really doesn't. Neither do I any longer. All this stuff with being infallible and all, is pure rubbish. Yes, once upon a time I really did believe that I was the gift of god to humanity. As do all pre-adolescent Arab boys. But I have developed.

I was angry, selfish and deadly jealous, and for this reason I forced my wives to cover themselves. And I was so picky about my honour! Oh, the subject of my marriage to the very young Aisha I will not touch at all. Phew...

I wish that someone will tell people, that even I have changed and am now regretting many of the things I used to consider infallible.

Dear Kurt, you may be wondering what caused me to change.

Believe me, it was hardly a miracle. Merely divine intervention. When I died, God came in person to receive me. Initially, that made me proud. But then God beat me up for six days in a row, took a rest of only two hours, and then proceeded to beat sense into me for a full fourteen days, until I actually started reconsidering.

God explained me a few things that I apparently have misunderstood. His name, for one. It is not Allah, it is Allan. He also told me that I had misunderstood his vital message, that people should have joy. That had gotten lost in translation, thus I thought his intention was that people should grow beards. God told me that humour and critical thinking area his creations, and that lack thereof is the work of the Devil. Thank God, I finally came to my senses.

I have now reached a state of harmony with my insecurity and my vanity. I attend yoga lesson at the Buddha and therapy at Freud. Am enjoying the incomparably enlightening dialogues with Søren Kierkegaard, Gandhi and Buddha. Noah is kind enough to invite me into his boat. Sailing is most relaxing. And we must not forget Jesus, who taught me to turn water into wine. I love wine.

You, dear Kurt, are an artist, so I guess this will have your interest. My good friend Moses and I are both attending painting lessons with Van Gogh, which gives peace of mind. All of this has helped me develop. I am so sorry that I used to terrorize people, sword in hand and another sword in the other hand, just to make them submit to my ideas.

But what in the name of the heavens could I have done back then, lost in some godforsaken desert where newborn girls were buried just for being girls? I did my best back then to improve the quality of life, but I got carried away and got addicted to power. I didn't know any better, and back then there were hardly anyone in the Arab desert able to convince others by means of a sweet smile and a talent for discussion. Tragically, the situation remains the same today. I needed to be relentless and tough. But that needs not continue now.

Believe me, I've been sent down to humanity many a time, forced by God, in order to set matters straight. But each and every time I come down, telling people to stop taking an outdated text that literally, they go absolutely berserk, call me heretic and frowningly either stone me to death or hang me in lampposts. They keep glorifying an ancient image of me, an image that I no longer consider mine. What they really should be offended by is not some caricature, but rather the gruesome images of fellow believers who, in the name of god, cut throats of infidels.

Dear Kurt. Thank you for listening. I merely intended to talk with a friend. I hope that you and all storytellers will keep expression yourself. Believe me, critical thinking is important, for as some of your fellow countrymen said: Nothing is holy, except for love.

God is taking care of you, and just to make safe I hereby say, on behalf of all the fanatics: My apologies. Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

Congratulations on the exhibition!

Best regards
The Prophet