EARLIER THIS WEEK, I commented that, as Yusuf Islam, the singer Cat Stevens has held to an extreme Islamic fundamentalist position regarding music. I wrote, “Wahhabism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia, and the inspirer of al Qaeda, is especially known for its hatred of music. In Wahhabi theology, all music except for drum accompaniment to religious chanting is haram, or forbidden. . . . Yusuf Islam has demonstrated his sympathy for this posture on several occasions. . . . In 1997, he released an album titled I Have No Cannons That Roar, dedicated, he said, to the cause of the Bosnian Muslims. In an interview with Stephen Kinzer, appearing in the New York Times on December 8, 1997, he commented on the project, ‘I’ve . . . used a very conservative approach. You only hear my own voice, a slight choral accompaniment and drums. Let’s say that’s the safest option according to certain Islamic schools of thought.'”
On this topic, a correspondent sent me a fascinating article from the Toronto Globe and Mail of August 7, 2000, by a Canadian Muslim woman named Rahat Kurd, under the title, “Why Cat Stevens had it all wrong: The former pop star should never have turned me off to the beauty of music in the name of Islam.” Kurd’s article included the following recollection of an encounter with Stevens: “I read about how the views of this singer-turned-Islamic-activist have ‘developed,’ and that ‘his hard line on music has softened’ . . . That day, he sang a spare yet evocative song he’d recently written for children, called ‘A is for Allah.’ It prompted some of us to clap our hands in appreciation, but he objected. The patrician distaste in his tone was unmistakable: ‘We don’t . . . clap . . . for Muslims,’ said the white, male British pop star.” (Applause is also forbidden by Wahhabis.)
Kurd continued:
However, in my own further review of the contribution of Yusuf Islam, the supposed peace activist, to solidarity with Bosnian Muslims, I rediscovered a really shocking item. When I listened to the album I Have No Cannons That Roar I found that among Yusuf Islam’s own rather primitive “children are dying” stuff–and the album’s somewhat unattractive renditions of lovely Sufi poems by my friend Dzemaludin Latic–there is a song in the Arab style with the following verse:
To go and perform Jihad
When the Mujahids make their wish
To go and perform Jihad
Then they read the Book of God
Sending their Salawat [Blessings].
This song ends with the lines:
We will stand for Judgment Day
Paradise will open up
For those who came with Salawat [Blessings].
The extraordinary thing about this is that jihad vocabulary was never used by the Bosnian soldiers during the war there. Dzemo Latic himself wrote a poem comparing Bosnia to a battle fought by Muhammad, but did not use the term jihad. In my book, The Two Faces of Islam, I contrast the legitimate, self-defensive jihad (i.e. military struggle) of the Bosnians, with the terrorist “jihad” of the Wahhabis. But the Bosnians have never incited local Muslims to go off to perform jihad; that was a habit only among bin Ladenite Arabs who injected themselves into the Bosnian war, and who had no real effect on the struggle except to make things more difficult for the Bosnians. That is one of the main reasons Bosnians do not show up in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theatres of conflict chosen by the Wahhabi warriors.
The more we know about Cat Stevens, i.e. Yusuf Islam, the more the decision to deport him becomes justified.
Stephen Schwartz is the author of The Two Faces of Islam.
