Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Yusuf/Cat Stevens complains about the ‘monstrous propaganda machine’ that makes people dislike Islam

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There have been over 49,000 jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11. Would Yusuf/Cat Stevens have us believe that they didn’t happen, or that they’re all really the fault of Israel and the U.S.? Does he expect us to ignore Islam’s violent, expansionist, supremacist teachings? Its misogyny? Its Jew-hatred?

Would Yusuf/Cat Stevens consider his support for the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa against Salman Rushdie to be part of the “monstrous propaganda machine”? As the Washington Post, of all people, reminded us in 2021, when Cat Stevens was first reemerging after decades of silence, as a new convert to Islam, he enthusiastically endorsed the death fatwa against Salman Rushdie for supposedly blaspheming Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. In 1989, “after Rushdie had officially been targeted because of his portrayal of the prophet Muhammad in his novel ‘The Satanic Verses,’ Stevens had matter-of-factly confirmed that the Koran prescribes death as the punishment for blasphemy.” Nor was this simply a matter of confirming that the death penalty for blasphemy was indeed Islamic teaching.

Confronted on a BBC show, “Stevens was asked directly whether Rushdie deserved to die. ‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, without much hesitation. Were Rushdie, a marked man, to come to him for help, how would he respond? With what he subsequently insisted was nothing more than an ill-advised attempt at dry humor, a straight-faced Stevens said, ‘I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I’d try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.’ When asked whether he would participate in the burning of an effigy of the author, he replied that he would instead hope it were ‘the real thing.’”

When the predictable firestorm ensued, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam issued a press release “indicating that his comments had been manipulated in the editing room and taken out of context (this, despite the fact that the New York Times reported that Stevens had ‘watched a preview of the program today and said in an interview that he stood by his comments’).” On his official website, Stevens makes a patently false claim: “I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini – and still don’t.”

In the very next sentence, he blames Rushdie’s book, not Khomeini’s fatwa, for all the trouble: “The book itself destroyed the harmony between people and nations and created an international crisis.”

Salman Rushdie himself would have none of Stevens’ denials, saying, “For many years, Yusuf Islam has been pretending he didn’t say the things he said in 1989, when he enthusiastically supported the Iranian terrorist edict against me and others. However, his words are on the record, in print interviews and on television programs.… I’m afraid Cat Stevens got off the peace train a long time ago.”

Indeed. As recently as 2011, a user published on YouTube a nasheed in which the author of “Peace Train” sang, “I’m praying to Allah to give us victory over the kuffar” (unbelievers). Does Yusuf/Cat still pray for victory over the kuffar? What kind of victory?

Comments

  1. I had forgotten that he is still alive

    If he thought that islam was so beautiful in 1977, why didn’t he then move to a real islamic country, like Saudi Arabia or any of its neighbors? He could have celebrated islam in all its supposed glory

    • ‘He’s now trying to celebrate it when it’s in all its real gory’…..just another evil muzzie blaming the victims for what muzzies do to them.

  2. The truth about Islam is what makes rational, non-islamic people dislike islam. The facts about Mohammed show that he was the opposite of Jesus Christ in every way (and was a very disgusting person). Islam itself, through the Koran, negates the very foundation of Christianity, creating a Jesus who is nothing more than a shadow of the real being.

  3. A man who made who became a millionaire thru music sales ,concerts ,and the music industry all thing involving music outside of Islamic pray are forbidden in Islam. The irony is unbelievable did he give all his money to the local mosque and ask for forgiveness from the Iman ?

  4. He’s a traitor to civilisation, so not one word that he says matters – not even in the slightest.

  5. What a fool believes, when a fool speaks. Cat Stevens left the real world and entered the submission to Islam therefore anything he speaks amounts to nothing.

    • He is a complicated fella who has painted himself in a box. Frankly, any public figure who embrasces Islam while ignroing it’s faults should just be ignored and forgotten. He has done great damage to humanity. Thank you for reminding by Mr. Spencer

      • But he *hasn’t* just ignored the brutality of Islam–he has promulgated it. He wanted his coreligionests to murder Salman Rushdie, and said he would helpt them do so.

  6. New version
    Peace Train
    by Cat Stevens- Youssef Islam

    Now I’ve been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
    And I believe it could be, everyone turns to Islam
    Oh I’ve been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
    And I believe it could be, some day it’s going to come
    Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
    Oh peace train, I’ll show them, come take me home again
    Now I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
    And I believe it could be, everyone will be Muslim
    Oh peace train sounding louder
    Blow up the peace train
    Come on now peace train
    Yes, peace train Allah Ackbar!
    Everyone blow up the peace train
    Come on now peace train
    Get your bags together, get your bombs and nails
    Cause it’s getting nearer, it soon will be with you
    Now come and join the dying, it’s not so far from you
    And it’s getting nearer, soon it will all be BOOM!
    Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
    Why must we go on letting Jews live; we can’t be at peace with them.
    Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
    Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

    • I did love his version of “Morning Has Broken” (a piece he did not write)–but that was many years ago.

  7. Islam and its Muslim hate us, Non-Muslims, the lowest of Allah’s creatures as taught by Allah. Corrupt Allah in Qur’an 8:39 says, “And engage in war with them[Non-Muslims] until there will not be sedition and the religion will be completely to Allah…” As a result, Non-Muslims are marked for death by Islam and its Muslims.

    Allah in Qur’an 5:14 instructs, “And some of those who say, ‘Surely we are Nasara (Christians),’ we took their covenant. So they have forgotten a part of what they were reminded of, so we have stirred up ENMITY and HATRED among them until the resurrection day. And Allah will inform them of what they

  8. The enormous propaganda machine that makes people hate Islam is Islam itself.

    In the wake of 9/11, I re-read the Qur’an in English translation, and started exploring the Hadith–part of me (the lingering liberal?) wishes I hadn’t. Islam, like Marxism, loves violent conflict as a means to spread its message. It is not the religion of peace that Dubya Bush mentioned when winging it while trying to avoid a large national backlash against Muslims in the wake of 9/11.

    As a Bible-oriented Christian located somewhere around the classical Reformed Confessions and Pietism, I note this about the Bibe:

    1. Its ban on the Seven Nations of Canaan was a one-time thing related to theIsraelite conquest of the land promised to Abraham–and delayed because “the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full” (Gn. 15:16). It is also accompanied to the covenantal warning that if Israel should also fall intothe sins of the Canaanites, a similar fate would befall Israel (Num. 33–and see how it worked out in the historical book ofSamuel and Kings).

    2. Since the Resurrection of Christ, the Chosen People’s marching orders have been to make disciples of all nations through Word and Sacrament (Mt. 28:19); not a program of military conquest.

    3. The New Testament also enjoins seeking peace with all as much as it is up to us (Rom. 12:18).

    And what are we to make of Islamic “heroes” like Osama Bin Laden, who in the wake of the 9/11 attacks boasted that “only Muslims” could be so brave as to carry out such attacks, only to turn around and cry that it was the “JOOOOOOZ DUNNIT!” when thedaisy cutters started exploding near his hideout? Or those brave, Fanon-esque “freedom fighters” of Hamas who cheerfully posted videos of the rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7?

    • Yes, Kepha–after 9/11 I decided to read the Qur’an and see if Islam was really as violent as some said. The more I learned, I realized it was actualy far worse than I had thought.

  11. When the termite swarms eat the house, the termites then say had the house not been there, they wouldn’t have eaten it.

    muzzies blame the victims for all of the damage, destruction and death caused ty them. That is the way of psychopaths.

  12. Islam creates its own propaganda through the deaths of those who will not convert to Islam.

  14. Yeah, Cat, you nong. Thats over 1400 years of negative propaganda and millions of deaths as a result of the murderous propagation of Islam. What’s to dislike?

  15. When people point out the truth about islam it is monstrous propaganda. In a strange twist Stevens denial of the truth about islam is in itself monstrous propaganda.

  16. I would like to hear what he has to say about the many thousands murdered in Iran for just protesting against a government which was imposed by revolution and has ruled by tyranny ever since. Or the thousands of young women tortured, raped and murdered for not wearing hijab. Or the spreading of terrorusm by the same government.

  17. Being a born in England fella he sure didn’t wish to move to one of the 50 plus full on islamic countries around the world that would have embraced him 100%.
    He often went to Penang Malaysia with his family for holidays when I lived there in the late 1990s-early 2000s.
    When I listen to the beautiful music he made way back when I try to distance myself from who the moron is today.
    Cat Stevens was loved back in the day born in London of a woman from Cyprus and a father from Egypt.
    How can he think its propaganda against islam as the teachings in that Fascist Religious Cult of Death, Oppression and Evil do all that for themselves for anybody to witness.

  18. I wonder what his opinion on having a 9 year old wife is. Or maybe thats why he loves islam so much. Just asking.

  19. He appears to claim to be a nonaligned Muslim. Neither Sunni nor Shia or any other sect.
    He just says he’s Muslim.

    That’s not submitting to Islam –
    that is making a personal choice of designing Islam for yourself.
    That is haram (forbidden)
    Therefore, according to Sunni and Shia he is some kind of mubtadi (heretic).
    He’s guilty of introducing innovation into Islam. Innovation is haram.

    Furthermore, he is some kind of heretic that sings and plays music.
    Playing musical intruments and singing is haram(forbidden) especially when done for entertainment.

    And this heretic sings and plays music for money! Sounds seriously haram to me.

    So, where’s the fatwa?

  25. Yusuf/Cat Stevens complains about the ‘monstrous propaganda machine’ that makes people dislike Islam
    ……………………………………………

    So it has nothing to do wth pious Muslims like him saying that if he saw Salman Rushdie that he would alert other Muslims so that they could kill this peaceful author? Uh huh…

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