Is it just me . . . or are you, too, getting tired of the mainstream entertainment media’s gushing over HAMAS mule Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens a/k/a Stephen Georgiou? Whether it’s FOX News’ uber-liberal faux-movie-critic Roger Friedman or today’s USA Today, which features a gusher by longtime music writer Edna Gundersen, the attempts to whitewash this extremist with a guitar get stale and tiresome.
If ever there were a time to re-birth Moon Unit Zappa’s “gag me with a spoon” from the ’80s, this is it:
David Spero, Yusuf’s manager, sees maturity, not a radical personality change. “Cat Stevens was the voice of a generation, and Yusuf is a voice of that same generation grown up,” he says. . . .
After nearly drowning off the coast of Malibu in 1976, the singer turned to Islam and found “a message to the human heart” in a copy of the Quran his brother gave him. “It didn’t have any connection to politics or global issues or the continuing turbulence in the Middle East,” he says. “That wasn’t the issue.”
HAMAS Money-Mule Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens & Family
Yusuf initially ducked public scrutiny when he became a Muslim. . . .
When controversies erupted, Yusuf often served as a Muslim ambassador to the West, sometimes unintentionally inflaming relations (his comments on the Salman Rushdie fatwa), but usually offering healing words, as he did after 9/11.
The terror attacks “were a turning point,” he says. “The message was: We better get to know each other before we destroy each other. The people in the middle, who are the majority, woke up to that. Unfortunately, a few leaders at the time didn’t represent that point of view.”
While he struggles to explain Islam’s tenets, he isn’t an apologist for Muslims and says he’s frustrated that “they can point fingers but very rarely say, ‘Perhaps I can do something to bridge the gaps.’ ” . . .
“We yearn for happiness, beauty, peace, love,” he says.
Okay, so he has a Jewish apologist manager who goes on about him like a bad Minnie Riperton song.
But hmmm . . . he was a money mule for HAMAS (which is why he’s barred from Israel), he supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwah on Salman Rushdie (and said anyone who “defames the prophet, he must die”), is all tied up with Al-Qaeda splinter groups in Britain, and doesn’t particularly like Jews, when he writes against ’em.
This is the guy who “struggles” and “isn’t an apologist for Muslims”? Whatever. Time to end the fraudulent gushing over this extremist. If only Cat Stevens had become David Duke instead of Dawud Al-Duke, we wouldn’t be treated to these endless waterfalls of syrup over a has-been’s bad, anachronistic pop songs.
Cue the Moon Unit Zappa. Grody to the max.
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