Yusuf/Cat Stevens Complains of ‘Monstrous Propaganda Machine’ That Makes People Dislike Islam – PJ Media

The artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, and then as Yusuf Islam, and then as Yusuf/Cat Stevens (you can call him anything, just don’t call him late for dinner), early on Thursday morning weighed in on the conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. He did not, however, have a negative word to say about the bloodthirsty Iranian regime; instead, he said that the problem was all anti-Muslim propaganda: 

Perhaps I was particularly blessed to have discovered Islam in 1977, before the Iranian Revolution, when Muslims were less visible and the monstrous propaganda machine had not been fully in service to lay the ground for the purposes of today’s wars of conquest in the Middle East. However, Islam’s spiritual message for humanity – like the Sun – is not going away, but deliberately smothered by the doom clouds of continuous wars. 

The pop music elder statesman and doctrinaire Muslim convert seems to be saying that what derailed the peace train was not the Iranian revolution or the brutal regime it brought to power, but Western propaganda designed to justify what he claims were and are “wars of conquest in the Middle East.” The implication is that the need to justify these wars led these evil propagandists to demonize Islam, which has a “spiritual message for humanity” that this propaganda was designed to obscure.

All right. Let’s examine Yusuf’s theory. 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?

Also, since Yusuf made these claims in the context of talking about the revolution in Iran, it’s worth revisiting his previous statements regarding one of the Iranian regime’s most notorious actions. 

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.”

Related: Two Dead in Texas as Muslim Migrant With Qur’an Shoots Up Bar, Cops Search for Motive

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?