[Peace-discuss] Cat Stevens

[Phil Stinard]

"There are no words I can use
Because the meaning still leaves for you to choose
And I couldn't stand to let them be abused, by you." -- Cat Stevens, 
Foreigner Suite

I had forgotten about Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) and his music for many 
years until US immigration officials diverted his flight from London and 
deported him last week for being on a terrorist watch list.  A complete 
account of Yusuf Islam's ordeal from Counterpunch is posted below.  
Ultimately, the US's action will be good for Yusuf, his cause, and his music 
because of the attention it is drawing to his work.

I remember mainly the music from the Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and 
the Firecat eras, but because the US government sparked my attention, I 
bought "The Very Best of Cat Stevens" album and found that he wrote and 
played a broad range of music, from psychedlic overproduced British pop, to 
folk music, to soul, to proto-disco.  His career is a study in musical 
exploration and trying out new things, and by revisiting his music, which is 
from the time I was growing up, I find that I'm gaining a deeper 
understanding of myself and the times I lived through.  That's the bright 
side of this incident for me.

--Phil

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The Expulsion of Cat Stevens

By GARY LEUPP

    Oh, peace train, take this country.
    Come take me home again

    Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam), 1971



    "With respect to Cat Stevens ... our Homeland Security Department and 
intelligence agencies found some information concerning his activities that 
they felt under our law required him to be placed on a watch list and 
therefore deny him entry into the United States. In this instance, 
information was obtained that suggested he should be placed on the watch 
list and that's why he was denied entry into the country."

    Colin Powell, September 14, 2004

Cat Stevens in 1978 announced that he had converted to Islam, becoming Yusuf 
Islam. This itself wouldn't have been a big issue to fan like me. After all, 
there were Muslim pop singers like Jimmy Cliff, and singers into all kinds 
of religion. But he simultaneously gave up singing, finding his own work 
sinful and embarrassing, and even asked his record companies to stop 
circulating his material. So it seemed like Islam, his version of it anyway, 
had stolen Cat Stevens from us.

But Stevens was my favorite singer-songwriter in high school, and loving his 
work, admiring his versatility (doing the artwork for his own album-covers), 
and knowing that he'd had a difficult life, I always wished him well. If 
religion brought him peace, I thought he deserved it. During the 
controversies that followed, including his sympathetic remarks about 
Khomeini in Iran, and about the Salman Rushdie fatwa affair, I thought he 
was trying to convey the feelings of Muslims to the western world. (As the 
London-born son of a Greek Cypriot and Swede, his roots are all over that 
world.) I didn't and don't agree with a lot of what he's said, but I do 
think his work reveals a sensitive, decent person. I think the Yusuf of 2004 
is still fundamentally the Cat of 1970.

My favorite Cat Stevens song is one of his most popular: "Father and Son," 
written for Revolussia, his never-produced musical/film which I take it was 
set during the Russian Revolution, in which a father gently tells his 
(Bolshevik?) son:

    It's not time to make a change,
    Just relax, take it easy.
    You're still young, that's your fault,
    There's so much you have to know.

I wondered at the time this came out (1970) about the line "that's your 
fault" since of course it's no young person's responsibility that he or she 
is young. But I checked a dictionary and discovered that "fault" can mean 
"weakness." The father here is, through Cat's mellow voice, saying, "The 
problem is you're just too young to understand the world." Go out, settle 
down, marry, be like me. You'll be happy.

    In that so familiar song, the son responds indignantly, in a 
contrastingly angry, bitter, but equally confident tone, not directly to the 
father but to the world he wants to change:

    How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
    It's always been the same, same old story.
    From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
    Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.

When I first heard this I was doing what the National Forensics League 
called "dramatic interpretation," in which the student takes a scene from a 
drama and through voice variation and facial angles represents dialogue 
between two or more actors. I didn't know this was written as part of a 
musical which would involve a duet, but was impressed by Cat Stevens 
performing both roles in this song.

The father repeats the same refrain, with the son interrupting his wise 
words at the
end:

    Away Away Away, I know I have to
    Make this decision alone---no

The son inveighs against his father and the world, explaining how all the 
things he's come to know inside are hard to face, but harder to ignore. As 
he repeats at the end "I know I have to go," the father in the background 
asks "Why must you go and make this decision alone?" That's the inconclusive 
end. It leaves you moved by generational and historical change and the whole 
complicated human condition. It's not the work of a narrow mind or potential 
threat to peace-loving people.

Yet here you have the creator of this piece, and so many brilliant other 
ones, a man associated with charitable work and the establishment of 
mosques, boarding a plane with his daughter from London to the U.S., after 
the normal security checks, planning to do some recording in Nashville. He's 
apprehended as a possible terror suspect after the plane was diverted from 
its flight path to Bangor Maine by U.S. authorities, causing lots of 
inconvenience to lots of people, and sent back to Heathrow Airport. You have 
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw protesting to Colin Powell, probably 
saying "Don't you think you're getting a bit paranoid here, and don't you 
think this will be seen as ridiculous in the world?" and that very sad 
figure Powell publicly justifying the action. The inquiring mind turns to 
the internet to find some rationale, and learns that in 2000 Yusuf Islam was 
denied admission to Israel, accused of donating funds to Hamas in 1998. He 
denied any knowing contribution to Hamas.

Yusuf Islam has sponsored orphanages in Hebron. Israeli authorities say such 
funds have been diverted to Hamas' violent actions. I have no idea who's 
right here. Muslims have to contribute to charities, if able; this is one of 
the Five Pillars of Islam. Just like Mormons have to tithe. And if somebody 
uses somebody's donation for other than the intended purpose (as happens, 
all the time, in contributions to respectable mainstream institutions in the 
U.S.) some government can say the donor supported that unintended 
purpose---and so should be on a watch list, or list of inadmissible persons. 
It can just smear people it wants to keep out.

The broad message of the Cat Stevens Incident is: even a '70s rock star with 
millions of dollars and millions of fans, and no possible connection to 
9-11, or any likely desire to ever inflict any harm on this country, can't 
enter Ashcroft's America if he's Muslim, has been accused (rightly or 
wrongly) of ties to Palestinians (rightly or wrongly) accused of violence 
against non-Americans in a distant foreign country, and has spoken out 
against war on Iraq. This is to protect the USA from people who "hate our 
freedoms."