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A Different Guy Now

Entry 2085, on 2020-10-30 at 10:50:47 (Rating 4, Religion)

Note: I wrote this post a few weeks back and didn't publish it, because I thought it was unnecessarily negative. But recent events have encouraged me to bring it back. What were those events? The latest Islamic terrorist murders in France, which has lead to Macron as describing France as "under attack". Here's the post...

Often the behaviour of new converts to an ideology reveal the starkest truths about that belief's true nature. This is never more true than when the ideology is a religion. Read this blog and you will see that I am no friend of religion in general, but I particularly find Islam problematic, at least at this phase of its evolution. Note that I fully agree that other religions (and non-religious ideologies) also have their issues, and arguably Christianity has been even worse in the past, but I am talking about now.

The "new convert" I am going to discuss in this post is Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens (a stage name; his real name was Steven Demetre Georgiou), who was a well-known folk-pop singer from the 1970s. Just an aside here: why do all these people need to name themselves after their religion - do they really have that little personal identity?

Steven's (I'll use that name in this post) performed many popular songs with an emphasis on peace, spirituality, and other personal issues. In other words, he superficially seemed to be a peaceful, forgiving person, and there was no reason I know of not to accept that conclusion.

Here's an example of his apparent philosophy at the time, from his song "Peace Train": "Now, I've been happy lately; Thinkin' about the good things to come; And I believe it could be; Something good has begun; Oh, I've been smilin' lately; Dreamin' 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..."

So now let's look at some of his comments and actions since his miraculous conversion to Islam. In particular, he supported the fatwa (and death sentence) against Salman Rushdie for the contents of his novel, "The Satanic Verses".

In 1989, while discussing his beliefs at Kingston University in London, Stevens said: "He [Rushdie] must be killed. The Koran makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die." A significant change from "Peace Train", isn't it?

A short time later, in an interview on Australian television programme, he reiterated this belief in the following exchange: Interviewer: "You don't think that this man deserves to die?" Stevens: "Who, Salman Rushdie?" Interviewer: "Yes." Stevens: "Yes, yes." Interviewer: "And do you have a duty to be his executioner?" Stevens: "Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act - perhaps, yes." No sign of him backing away from his extremist views there!

But, later he did try to reverse direction, when he described the exchanges as "stupid and offensive jokes" made "in bad taste", but "part of a well-known British national trait... dry humour on my part." This seems unlikely to be genuine, and apparently he lacks even the honesty to take ownership of his true beliefs.

On the same program he said he would prefer to see Rushdie burned in person, rather than just an effigy being used, and that if Rushdie turned up on his doorstep asking for help he would call the Islamic authorities to deal with him instead. He also later recanted on those statements, again using the excuse that it was humour, possibly in bad taste - gee, do you think?

On his web site, he wrote that he never called for the death of Rushdie, and didn't support the fatwa, although "the book destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis." While it might be possible to twist the truth sufficiently to reach this conclusion, it would require a significant amount of self-delusion to do it.

To be fair, I do need to show the more positive comments he has made, including following the 11 September attacks on the US. He said: "I wish to express my heartfelt horror at the indiscriminate terrorist attacks committed against innocent people of the United States yesterday. While it is still not clear who carried out the attack, it must be stated that no right-thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action. The Koran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity. We pray for the families of all those who lost their lives in this unthinkable act of violence as well as all those injured; I hope to reflect the feelings of all Muslims and people around the world whose sympathies go out to the victims of this sorrowful moment."

Unfortunately, he seemed to miss the link between believing the peaceful passages in an old book, and believing the more violent parts of that same book.

On another occasion he made a fair point, saying that incitement to violence is not solely an attribute of the Koran, and that there were plenty of murderous injunctions in the Old Testament as well. This is true, but surely that should be more a more a point against the unthinking acceptance of both books rather than a defence of either.

Stevens was refused entry into the US in 2004 because his name was on a terrorist watch-list. Of course, this lead to a lot of criticism of the policy (this was while George Bush was president, so these issues pre-date Trump) but I think it wasn't totally unjustified, given some of his beliefs revealed through those comments.

One commentator said this about the situation: "Because he's not a good guy. It may be that he once sang 'Peace Train'... but he hasn't been Cat Stevens for a long time, you know. He's a different guy now."

So, what am I trying to say here? Well, I think religion can be a source of a lot of intolerance and violence, but I concede that isn't inevitable. Many people say that violence which apparently originates in religion is really from another source and religion is just used as an excuse. Well maybe, but you might say the same thing about any ideology, including extreme political views.

Stevens seemed like a peaceful, positive person until his conversion, when he became intolerant, unthinking, and dishonest. Is that religion's (in this case, Islam's) fault? Well, surely it must be at least partly the cause. Do the positive attributes of religion outweigh the bad? That's difficult to say. All I will say is that we need to be very aware of the bad side of religion, especially those religions which have greater political power at this point in history.

Comment 1 (5591) by Anonymous on 2020-10-30 at 12:37:42:

Ah OK. Maybe you should have left this unpublished.

Comment 2 (5592) by OJB on 2020-10-30 at 14:14:58:

You could be right. I 'll let you know if I'm murdered by a crazed Islamist shouting Allahu Akbar!

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