Cat Stevens was called Yusuf Islam when he supported a fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie to be killed
Rowan Dean, The Courier-Mail
“NOW, I’ve been crying lately, thinkin’ about the world as it is. Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss?”
It was a good question back in the ’70s, and just as pertinent today, with children being gassed to death in the hellholes of Syria.
The man posing the question in his hit song Peace Train was English singer-songwriter Steven Demetre Georgiou.
Handsome, a multicultural pin-up boy, Steven was half Greek, half Swedish and wrote melodic pop songs that could make The Beatles weep.
In those days, to indicate coolness, you said “cat”, so the cool hippy became Cat Stevens. By 1974, if you weren’t whistling along to his Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, well, you were either stone deaf or living at the bottom of a well in the middle of the Persian desert.
Which brings us to the dude who is, apparently, living at the bottom of a well in the middle of the Persian desert, and has been for nearly a thousand years: the 12th Imam, or Mahdi, a messianic figure to Shi’ite Muslims.
He is destined to reappear out of the well in the holy city of Qom very soon to create an Islamic caliphate on Earth.
Or so many devout Muslims believe. By the end of the 1970s, these two wild worlds collided.
In 1977, Cat Stevens converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusuf Islam and denounced music as the work of the devil.
Two years later, a violent bunch of fundamental ayatollahs overthrew the government of Iran and established their Islamic Republic and brought back the burqa, the stoning of adulteresses, hangings, throwing gays off buildings and other such charming aspects of sharia law.
Fast forward a decade to 1989 when British-Indian author Salman Rushdie wrote a book The Satanic Verses which ridiculed Islam.
The Muslim world went berserk. Books were burned, booksellers killed and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared a “fatwa” on Rushdie, instructing Muslims everywhere to kill him.
Asked at the time what he thought of this, Yusuf Islam, the former peace-loving guitar-strummer, said: “He must be killed. The Koran makes it clear. If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.”
Cat, sorry, Yusuf, then went on TV saying he wouldn’t bother attending a burning of an effigy of Rushdie unless it was “the real thing”. Nice.
Then came 9/11, Bali, Paris, Brussels, London and two decades of Islamist terrorism.
Somewhere along the way, Yusuf decided music wasn’t so evil after all and, in fact, wasn’t a bad way to earn a crust so he picked up his guitar, dropped the awkward “Islam” from his moniker, and now wanders around the globe singing his old hits as Yusuf Cat Stevens. He’s coming to Australia this year.
Mr Islam – sorry, Mr Stevens – has never publicly apologised for advocating Rushdie’s murder, saying, “people need to get over it. It’s 25 years ago”.
Yet, imagine if an Aussie pop icon, say John Farnham or Jimmy Barnes, had gone on TV and called for the death of cartoonist Bill Leak when he received Islamist death threats two years ago. That’s how bad it was.
But in Australia, Yusuf Cat Stevens is fawned over by the likes of Waleed Aly on The Project. In a gushing interview two weeks ago about Cat’s “humanitarian” good deeds, Aly never once mentioned the fact that Yusuf had demanded a man be murdered for blasphemy.
To compound the hypocrisy, at the same time as Yusuf Stevens was being feted by the Left here, an incredibly brave and inspirational woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was being demonised and threatened by left-wing activists to the point where she cancelled her visit.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was born Muslim but renounced her religion, has an Islamic death sentence on her identical to Rushdie’s or Leak’s. She travels the world lecturing on the urgent need to reform Islam. Yet instead of interviewing her, the likes of Waleed Aly dismiss her as being a rock star of Islamophobia.
In luvvyland, Ayaan is the baddie and Cat is the hero.
“Oh baby, baby, it’s a wild world.” And a very mixed-up one at that.
Rowan Dean’s Way Beyond Satire wilkinsonpublishing.com.au
It is so easy for so-so programs like “The Project” to push the appeasement and no intelligence base as they have a panel full of presenter with questionable ethical, moral and social outlooks.
Once you try and have a person that has an actual understanding of the depravity and destructive outlooks of Islam you must shut that conversation down. You bring in a has been hypocrite who has now seen that money is more valuable than religion and they are put on the pedestal of perfection. “The Project is a bias appeasing waste of air time and TEN would be better of showing infomercials for some bogus weight loss program, at least you would know that this is CRAP!
actually, it sounds like our friend cat is still being a pious muslim. just like the first muslims, he is a money-grubber chasing after booty; the only difference between him and them is that he has not himself actually killed anybody (so far as i know, anyway). and since muhammed said that those who *pay* for outfitting a mujahid are as blessed as one, he probably has given money to monsters in the past, and probably continues to do so today.
he is a good muslim, and is thus a public menace in civilization.
Islam does not mean peace.
Islam means to submit.
Can 400 non-Muslims Australians sign a petition to protest and say he should not be allowed to visit Australia because of his incitement to violence?
The Chameleon nature of Islam at work again. Good old Yusuf Islam Stevens. I’m old enough to remember his stuff. It was like a somewhat diluted Dylan, protesting but without Dylan’s class. How he went from Buddhism to Islam is still utterly beyond me. Like Nelson Mandela, Stevens does not have to face up to his past. Has he really changed? Good question. I would like to ask him myself. Not acknowledging his past errors does no impress me at all. The fact that Walid Aly thinks a great deal of him just reinforces my prejudice! Where will the children play? Another good question. It is not western democracy blowing them up, it is Islam.
Especially seeing as he is half Greek and half Swedish. Maybe the latter explains it but after how Muslims occupied and ravaged Greece for centuries one would have thought he would have done anything but turn to Islam when he found religion. He did tell the story once of how he was swept out by a rip at an English beach and prayed that if he was saved he would turn to God and a few days later his brother (presumably also at least half Greek, maybe half brother, who knows) gave him a translation of the Koran so he took that as a sign Allah had answered his prayers. So it was his brother. How either of them could adopt the religion of those who had subjugated their forebears and purposely made those forebears feel humiliated is beyond me but that has been the pattern throughout history when Islam arrives the locals turn Turk as say. Women like Susan Carland and Lydia Shelly tend to do so as a result of Islam insisting they must in order to marry a Muslim, but then there are ones like Hanan Dover that has one puzzled and even more so why men would do so.
islam is very attractive to criminals; it makes their crimes holy, gives them justification for doing them, and rewards them with whatever they manage to steal. there will always be men who turn to islam, because we will always have criminals.
Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) is an islam !!!
And like ALL islam appeasers and ALL islams …
And like ALL “Tolerent of islam” non-islams …
promotes …
This …
the three tenets of islam
1. Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) an islam WILL force non-islams to convert to islam.
2. Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) an islam WILL force non-islams “of the book” (ie. Christians/Jews) to “willingly” agree to be slaves of islam.
3. Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) an islam WILL rape plunder then kill all non-islams “of the book” (ie. Christians/Jews) who will not convert or be willingly enslaved … and not of the book non-islams who wont convert to islam.
Purge … islam appeasers “Globally“
Purge … islam “Globally“
Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) an islam … MUST BE STOPPED !!!
However …
The islam invasion continues !!!
However …
The islam invasion SOLUTION remains the same !!!
Purge … islam appeasers “Globally“
Purge … islam “Globally“
There is no “other” Solution !!!
Every islam appeaser MUST be incarcerated” !!!
Every islam MUST be purged !!!
“Globally” !!!
Yusuf islam (previously and now aka Cat Stevens) an islam
IS A KNOWN CONFESSED CRIMINAL !!!
(he has publicly sworn to kill every non-islam)
islam appeasers and islams are getting away with their crimes …
only because the “Tolerant“ non-islam majority allow them …
Stop being “Tolerant of islam appeasers“
(ie … STOP being a coward)
Stop being “Tolerant of islam“
(ie … STOP being a coward)