Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam: Is All Forgiven? Should It Be?

My latest in PJ Media:

After emerging from decades of Sharia-induced silence, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam has been enjoying a comfortable late-career resurgence: He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he went back out on tour to hosannas from old fans who thought they’d never see him perform the old favorites again, and he is now reportedly working on an autobiography. It was thus surprising, given the general adulation he has been receiving, that the Washington Post had the temerity on Monday to publish a lengthy (nearly 4,000 words) rumination on Stevens/Islam’s conversion to Islam, his subsequent endorsement of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s death fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the lingering significance of his startling departure from the peace-and-love platitudes he had so charmingly voiced in the bright and hopeful days of our youth. Maybe all isn’t forgiven. Or shouldn’t be.

In “The Meaning of Yusuf/Cat Stevens,” Howard Fishman, whom the Post describes only as a “writer, composer and performer based in Brooklyn,” states the key elements of the case matter-of-factly: 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.” 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.’”

Not long after that, I allowed some friends to drag me along to see the alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs, with which I had been unfamiliar. The 10,000 Maniacs had had a hit with a version of Stevens’s “Peace Train” in 1987. I hadn’t known that until the Maniacs’ Natalie Merchant explained during the concert that the band was not going to play the song, and never would again, because “Cat Stevens has gone insane.” The audience applauded wildly.

It may have been the high-water mark of pop culture support for the freedom of speech.

There is more. Read the rest here.