“Dear Idiots”

Farshad Kholghi writes a weekly satirical column for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and yesterday he used The Iliad as his point of departure. Many thanks to Signe for the translation:

Ten Commandments from the Royal Garden

Every time I read it, I cannot help but laugh my head off at the world’s lousiest trick, namely the Trojan Horse.

When I first read the book in high school I could not imagine how someone could be so naïve, happy-go-lucky, and idiotic as to accept a “gift” from a mortal enemy without first asking a few critical questions.

But now, after the Copenhagen Municipality has approved the Iranian Mullah regime’s great mosque on Vibevej, it has dawned upon me that such naïve types exist, and that Homer’s adventure repeats itself in reality. The wooden horse has just been replaced by a gigantic building with a dome and four 35-meter minarets.

I enjoyed the book [Farshad is reading The Iliad in a park], and freshly fallen volcanic ash adorned the shrub next to my bench. But suddenly the shrub caught fire.

“Why in the world don’t you answer your mobile?” a voice said.

“Eh? I turned it off?” I said anxiously.

“I couldn’t get in touch with you on Facebook, either. So I had to call you the old fashioned way,” the voice explained.

“Who is it?”

“It is I, God. I have a message to the Islamic world. Write.”

I began to write.

“Dear idiots. You must shave off your ugly beards. You look like the great grandfather of the Neanderthal. […] And to all you women, who think you must cover yourselves with black garbage bags: Stop this nonsense. If I wanted you the cover up, I would have created you as a burka instead.

“I also have another newsflash. It is not just the Western cities that must be ‘multicultural’ and have mosques and prayer rooms. No. Also the Muslim countries and cities must be multicultural. Therefore I order millions of Christian, Jews, Buddhist and Hindus to go to Mecca and other places in Moslem countries to live there and build churches and temples. I hear that you spend billion of dollars on building giant mosques in the West. This is very interesting, considering the poverty of your own populations.

“Here are ten commandments for you — ten ideas on what you ought to spend your oil and drug trafficking money on, instead of building the spy nests that you call great mosques. Use the money on:

- - - - - - - - -

• Building girls’ schools.
  
• Building hospitals.
  
• Building universities, that can educate open-minded citizens instead of fanatics.
  
• Enlightening people that the earth is round, not flat.
  
• Providing decent living conditions so nobody has to emigrate in the hope of a better life.
  
• Getting rid of corruption.
  
• Establishing a social security net for the population.
  
• Accepting and taking care of refugees from other Muslim countries, so they don’t have to flee to the “impure” West.
  
• Transforming the desert into fruit gardens You can learn a lot from Israel there.
  
• Printing a new version of the Koran — without the many horrible, blood-spattering, and violent chapters that call for killing unbelievers, Jews and independent thinkers.

“Amen.”

Hat tip: Henrik Ræder Clausen.