Maof - A Prophet in His Own Land

East is East, and West is West,

and never the twain shall meet.

R. Kipling

----- Original Message -----

From: Doniyor student

To: Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript.

Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 10:27 AM

Subject: Doniyor

You think you can rule the world quiet peaceful on this path? All people know people of the world, especially Western people, are the most corrupt in some sense. Many teenagers use cigarets, alcohol, drugs, and other harmful things. You think it keeps going like this and everything will be beautifully? The press often publishes about maniacs, murders, and other abnormal people. 9 most evil murder maniacs out of 10 live in countries under Christian religion. Don't you think all this is result of this social condition. Many think democracy is freedom and do everything they want. In the streets they shamelessly kiss, smoke, curse. All Western stars do roughly speaking striptease, all movies show naked girls, guys and others. You think having seen these things the young will grow up right? All gynecologists always repeat that masturbation is bad for your health, but after seeing such movies you understand their warning are meaningless. Porno sites on the Internet, every movie has an explicit story. Starting at 10 years of age young people smoke, drink, interest in sex. You may say Muslim wives are like slavery, but many of them are content and hate the life of Western women. A Western woman always fights for her husband and many know of his cheating and do not tell. Because the streets are teaming with females in short skirts. Husband saw what his wife does not have at home but not what street women did not. Western divorce and infidelity statistics are highest. 14% of all men do sex with his own daughter (USA). I can speak for hours about dirty problems like that and prove it to you. This is all a result of democracy, if you can call it that. Many people of the West feel their way, she is wrong, tragic, but nothing can do. Medicine says, if one hand is sick and can't leave it on, cut it off. I do not want to say Ben Laden does jihad, only Allah knows. It may be something political. I accepted Islam because this religion forbids all the problems I counted. The Koran says about purity, about marriage, about economics, about politics, about medicine, about geography, history and other. I don't remember exactly, but one important scientist from the West published 100 or 200 the best books in the world, and in the first place was 1 — the Koran, 2 — the Newton book, 3 — the Gospel. And it says there that Mohammad wrote the Koran, but the scientist does not know that that book is the word of Allah the almighty. The Koran writes about Moses, and Jesus, and their faiths. It writes how the Jews lost the right way, how Christians left the right religion. These both are admitted profets and are very respected by Muslims. Western people think they are most clever, most faithful, always first. But they are deeply mistaken. For example, now they are standing like an innocent child before global warming, AIDS, Drug Addiction, and such. All these problems and shortcomings threaten Muslim countries and this is why someone decided the necessity of jihad. As you know, the Koran demands it. Imagine you learn your 11 year old son smokes, what do you do? Good parents yell at him and beat him if necessary. But, democratically, you have no right to beat your own child. I simply want that people first straighten themselves, and then others. (For example Bush) People who every day convert to Islam are not stupid, but educated, smart and strong. Please, find the verse where Jesus will say I am God, warship me. You will find no such verse in the Gospel, because he was profet and warshipped Allah. In Islam, the Gospel is also sent by Allah, but that book people changed and the Koran was given to Muhammad. I do not speek Russian too good and ask you to for give me forthat inadvance for grammar errors. At 1st and second world War, USA fought cowardly and egotistically and collected more than half gold and lent it to the world on interest. Learn history and economy.

Dear Doniyor:

You can't even imagine what waves of emotion your letter produced in me; what a nostalgic flame it stoked! No, I have never been to your country. But as a toddler and, later, as a young man, I lived across the street from the restaurant Uzbekistan in Moscow, and my palate still remembers the delicacies that could be found nowhere else in the entire Russian capital. Or how could I forget shish kabobs served in the summer restaurant Chaihana, three stories high, but open and airy as a gazebo; where customers looked from above at the masters laboring down below at the enormous grill shaped in a semicircle and producing almost invisible wisps of fragrant smoke, whose aroma made hungry customers suffer as if from unrequited love.

Can anyone forget the taste of the Cahor Uzbekistan, sweet as the memory of a first kiss? Whenever I was sick as a child, my grandmother gave me a tablespoon of it once a day to stimulate my appetite. And what do you think? After so many years, my appetite is still excellent! Since then, I have tried all kinds of fancy Ports and Sherries, not to mention the Georgian Kindzmareuli, but your Cahor is still number one in my memory. Probably because as a Jew I was born with seeds of decadence in me, I still remember myself as a very young child sneaking towards the pantry where the cherished bottle was kept, hoping to take a sip from it, infinitesimal, but, nevertheless, vertiginous. And how about the Chardjui melons that my grandfather used to bring home from his business trips! Huge, larger than a large watermelon, sweeter than honey, juicier than grapes, and yet crunchy like apples. Where else can you find melons like that?

After the Tashkent earthquake of 1966, when students from your stricken capital were being transferred to Moscow colleges, I got a new roommate. His name was Akmal Usmanov. What a guy he was! What pilaf he cooked! Once his parents came for a visit, and he outdid himself. Only Uzbeks were invited, but since I was a roommate, they made an exception for me. When Akmal's strict mother saw forks on the table, she immediately ordered Akmal to remove them. Akmal tried to leave one for me, but his mother showed no mercy. She told him that foreigners shouldn't be spoiled; if they wanted to eat at the same table with humans, they had to learn human table manners. Of course, she was speaking Uzbek, and her little speech was translated for me the next day. While she was speaking, I was smiling pleasantly, getting dizzier by the minute from the overwhelming aroma of the pilaf. And so, I had to eat it with my hands, desperately trying to mimic real humans. But while the real humans present did it without a problem and even with some degree of elegance, I had a thin, but steady stream of hot lamb fat flowing from my hand to my wrist and on into the sleeve of my jacket, dripping from its elbow and congealing in my lap like a cooled puddle of molten tin. Fortunately, I didn't have to distract myself with conversation since it was conducted in Uzbek. At the end of the dinner, Akmal's mother collected everything that was left of the pilaf on the plate in the center of the table and using just one hand, without losing even a single grain of rice, rammed it all into my mouth. While I was trying to swallow, without choking, enough of it so I could close my mouth, Akmal explained to me that that was how the guest of honor was traditionally treated at the Uzbek fete.

And so, you will believe me that I mean no offense when I say that Iranian pilaf, made out of the longest-grained, most fragrant basmati rice, with dill instead of carrots, is better than the Uzbek one. I savored plenty of it during the years that I lived in Baku. That's where I saw for the first time how Muslims drink en mass. I have to admit, they drink very well, very much, and never lose face. Even if someone happened to down a glass or two too many, he would do his best to quietly, holding on to the walls if necessary, walk himself home without offending anyone with either a word or a deed. Falling asleep on the sidewalk, a mishap pretty common among Moscow drunkards, was unheard of in Baku. But I have to tell you that I didn't meet any teetotalers there, either among the grown-ups or teenagers.

Of course, everyone smoked, including even very young kids, but women only smoked at home, because a woman who dared to smoke in public was called a slut, and who needs this kind of reputation just for smoking cigarettes? But the anasha, a Central Asian favorite derivative from sesame seeds, was used almost exclusively by the Muslims. There were exceptions, of course, but they were noticed: “See that? Russian guy anasha smoke!”

And I don't have to tell you how strict people were about everything related to sex. I came to Baku from Moscow where even then people were promiscuous in that uniquely Christian way: men and women actually slept with each other sometimes. Locals easily recognized me as a Muscovite, because my Russian was hopelessly tainted with the Moscow accent. They kept giving me the same friendly warning to stay away from local women. At first, I didn't take it seriously and just laughed,

“What are they going to do, cut me?”

The locals only sighed at my lack of concern,

“He understand nothing, yes. You tell him, he don't believe. How can you help him if such are Moscow ways?”

Eventually, I realized they weren't joking and began shrinking away from women, and rightly so. Locals considered virginity the main treasure a young woman could possibly possess. She could hold a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, star in the local production of Swan Lake, be the most beautiful creature in the world, moonlight as a cosmonaut, and be the only daughter of an underground millionaire, all at the same time, but without the hymen it would be impossible to marry her off. Interestingly, the opinion of the groom didn't really count in these matters. The morning after the wedding, an older female relative of the new husband, like an unyielding judge, was sent into the newlyweds' bedroom to inspect the linens. The results were ceremoniously announced to the guests. If the telltale signs were not obvious, the bride was sent back to her parents without the dowry, but with her reputation destroyed forever; and the groom's family would begin searching for the next candidate.

A lady from the apartment next door told me once about the marriage of her distant relative. The bride and groom had never met. The marriage was arranged between the two sets of parents. When all the details were discussed and all possible problems wrinkled out, the bride's parents, visibly embarrassed, admitted that the bride had a tiny defect, which they, as honest people, considered their duty to report to the parents of the groom. It so happened that the bride was no longer a virgin. After some consideration, the groom's parents said that since the parent's of the bride were so honest with them, they would reciprocate with similar honesty. The groom was not perfect either. It so happened that he was suffering from a clinical case of idiocy. The two tiny imperfections mercifully cancelled each other out. Everyone breathed out a sigh of relief, and, happy with their honesty, sentenced a normal girl (who probably was in love, unless some member of her own family had raped her, which wasn't at all unusual in Baku) to spend the rest of her life with a madman.

But what can you do with the most natural urges of one's body and soul? Contrary to your na?ve misconceptions, their source is found not in the well-known Christian decadence, but rather in the personal biology of the sufferers themselves, which doesn't really depend on the religion of their parents. This problem is gravely exacerbated by the fact that we are not talking about icy expanses of Sweden or Finland, but of subtropical latitudes where children ripen like tomatoes or even faster. Children will be children. In promiscuous Russia, and even more so in the West, a girl will wait a little, think a little, and, finally, surrender her maidenhead to a lucky suitor. Eventually she may even get married even though not a virgin, because Jews and Christians are no better than dumb animals; they don't even inspect the bed-sheets, so the slut risks absolutely nothing succumbing to her lewd instincts.

But the Azeri girls, along with their Uzbek counterparts, manage to follow their unbearable urges without inflicting any damage on their precious, but utterly useless membranes. This produces a stark contrast between the infantile innocence of their eyes and the wisdom of their skillful mouths, a contrast that, when seen on the face of a fifth-grader, can scare the crap out of any Christian and even some Jews, but leaves Muslims undeterred. And why not? Your prophet married a six-year-old girl, but didn't deflower her until she reached the ripe age of nine. Try imagining what Aisha learned in those three years. Just don't insult my intelligence suggesting that it was reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Prophet wasn't too adept in these subjects himself. Besides, instead of marrying her, he could have left her in her father's house and hired a tutor for her. So, try to imagine what was he doing with her. No hands! You can't? Then log on to one of your favorite sites on the Web. As far as I can tell from your letter, you know where to look for that stuff.

I was lucky. I left Baku long before the Soviet Union fell apart and Azerbaijan became independent. I learned about the Armenian pogroms there from the New York Times. You have also heard, I suppose, how your co-religionists killed everyone they could lay their hands on. They burned people alive. They cut open pregnant women's stomachs. They threw babies down from balconies. They raped women who were still alive, dying, or already dead. You are saying that 9 out of 10 homicidal maniacs are Christians? I don't know who sold you such a stupid lie. Look at your deeds, and you will see that 99 out of 100 observant Muslims are homicidal maniacs. Actually, it's 100 out of 100, but one didn't fulfill his quota and was locked in the loony bin.

You assure me that “people who every day convert to Islam are not stupid, but educated, smart and strong.” In my country, the overwhelming majority of new converts to Islam are inmates serving prison time for violent crimes. For a long time, people kept guessing why Islam attracted criminals. After 9/11, we know. Of course, everyone judges things from one's own perspective. It's quite possible that given the general background of your country's population, our newly made Muslims look educated, smart, and strong. That, I guess, should also be blamed on Christians and Jews.

You could argue that I am writing about Azeris, who are Shiites and, therefore, not really Muslim from your own, Sunni point of view. That wouldn't surprise me, since the Azeri speak of Uzbeks as a lower subspecies of the human race, although to a civilized person you both look equally savage. But take a look at Iraq where your brothers, the Sunnis, use every opportunity to murder your cousins, the Shiites. Frankly, I am sick and tired of reading and writing about how tribal elders in Pakistan sentence a woman to be gang-raped; how in Iran a raped woman is sentenced to be stoned for adultery; how Egyptians mutilate their women's genitals; how in all Arab countries the barbaric custom of “honor killings” is upheld by the majority of the population, as if this were the 12th rather than the 21st century. If you really want to see homicidal maniacs, look at photographs from Fallujah or Ramallah. Tune in to the al Jazeera channel. Even simpler: look in the mirror. You yourself may not have killed anyone yet, but you support the genocidal ideology called Islam, and, therefore, your hands are not as clean as you would like us to believe.

Your reference to the “important scientist from the West” looks even more absurd than the rest of your letter. You don't know the scientist's name, or the name of the book he allegedly wrote, or what exactly he wrote in that book (“100 or 200”). You don't even know the field in which he is supposed to be so important. Are you sure this scientist really exists? Could it be that your mullah dreamed him up along with the rest of the garbage he feeds you five times a day?

You write that America fought its wars “egotistically”. Who stopped Uzbekistan from doing the same? Of course, during the two World Wars, there was no country called Uzbekistan. Think about that simple historical fact. Our “egotism” saved Europe first from Hitler, then from Stalin. Only thanks to our “egotism”, the Soviet Union fell apart and Uzbekistan became an independent country; never mind how abysmally backward even on the generally backward background of the Muslim world.

I am not going to try to convince you that all the “statistics” you quote, all those 90% of maniacs, 14% of incestuous families, 50% of the all the world's gold, along with the rest of your “facts” are so absurd, that, next to it, even Soviet propaganda looks like the New York Times. (Although it's quite possible that it is the fault of the New York Times rather than yours.) Where do you manage to find all that junk? On the Internet, you are mostly interested in naked women. Could it be you found it all in the Koran?

You are confident that your women love their lives and hate the lives of Western women. I believe you. The thing is that our women do not only have to fight for their husbands. They also have to compete for the corner office on the 48th floor with the view of the Statue of Liberty, for a six-digit bonus at Christmastime, for a place on the space shuttle — for absolutely everything they have in life. Our women fight for all that and, God bless them, win. That's why fighting for her husband is not really that important for the Western woman. She is a perfectly complete person even without him. You, my dear critic, have never met women like that. They don't grow under the green banner of Islam. You are so very afraid of women like ours that no quantity of Viagra would help you overcome your fear. And why would a normal Western woman be interested in someone like you? There are centuries of evolution between your women and ours, and the same, by the way, is true about the men as well. Keep in mind, though, that the outcome of the evolution, which is, hopefully, ahead of you, is not guaranteed. Chimps, for example, will be chimps even a thousand years from today.

And since we have mentioned evolution, can you explain to me how did it happen that while we, infidels, fly into space, cure all kinds of diseases, make computers and write software for them, live ever longer, ever better, ever richer and freer lives, you, Muslims, in the 6 hundred years that have passed since Ulugbek built his telescope from adobe bricks, have invented or discovered exactly nothing? You don't know? I can explain. It is because you are... How should I put it tactfully? Well, Muslims. Your backwardness is not genetic; it's purely religious. You are perfectly capable of participating in all our achievements. But as long as you continue to worship your cruel idol, you will continue living in caves, destined to subsist on whatever falls from the table of the infidels. That's exactly what the Koran teaches, if you read it carefully and critically.

In conclusion, I would like to give you some very important advice. If you want to preserve your health, do not believe Uzbek gynecologists. Every real doctor will tell you that masturbation is good for your health. You want proof? Here it is. You probably have never heard of Bill Clinton, but I'm sure you know all about Monica Lewinsky and how she was laboring under a desk like a good Uzbek girl; while she was at it, Clinton was the guy behind the desk. Anyway, when Clinton was president, his Surgeon General was a lady named Jocelyn Elders (yet another example of how much a Western woman can achieve if she wants to). Dr. Elders made a passionate speech about the benefits of masturbation in front of the UN General Assembly and even strongly recommended to include it in the junior high school curriculum. Leaders of all the countries in the world, all highly respected (mostly in their own countries) people listened to her, and no one offered even a single word of objection. Unfortunately, the change of curriculum she suggested was not approved by the UN, because the quality of education in most countries is so low, they were afraid children might actually stop masturbating; and no one, obviously, wanted that to happen. In any case, I assure you that no harm to your health will come from your own hands. So, get comfortable, log on to your favorite web site or imagine that you are Muhammad in bed with a first-grader, and go for it with everything you've got!

I wish you success in everything you do and much happiness in your private life.

Zack Lieberberg

Translated by Yashiko Sagamori, March 13, 2005

Russian version