The Unlikely Return of Cat Stevens
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
He can return, but don't feel comfortable to apologizing.
He can return, but feel like that's all behind and no apology is necessary, or that that was done by a different person.
And several other possible cases -- a lot of which don't leave out the possibility of having regretted it.
Like we can regret something in private and internally, the same holds true for famous people, artists etc. They are not moral playthings that the public has some right to demand of them public repentance and submission outside their creative roles.
Or you know, maybe he doesn't feel the need to apologize because he still believe people should be killed for writing books, especially when these books have very little to do with Islam and when the people calling for murder didn't even read the damn book. I bet Yusuf didn't even read the Satanic verses either.
Calling Yusuf "Cat Stevens" Islam "disagreeable" is a euphemism, he is a bigot and an religious extremist of the worse kind. He wants people to get killed for their ideas although I bet he didn't even read Rushdie.
It has the right, it's just stupid to exercise it.
It's not as if we should only consume art made by good people. Or that whatever bad things an artists does in their personal life has much bearing to wether their art is any good (not to mention most good and bad things in one's life improve art: they instill it with life experience. Boy scouts seldom produce interesting work.).
If you want to punish the artist for something they did, put them in jail. Or don't be friends with them.
If they produce good art, and you don't listen to it because they are bad, you lose too.
>The public doesn't owe the artist anything
Well, if they listen to his works, then they owe him on that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens%27_comments_abou...
I have many Muslim friends, many of whom were some of the best friends I've ever had in my life. They trust and respect me enough that they consider me one of them, so they were open with me. Given conversations with them I've had in the past, they weren't as dogmatic as Cat Stevens is. And they were born and raised in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it's because they really know Islam (most of them are still believers) thus not as naive as a foreigner like Stevens.
To paraphrase. I'm saying I never knew who this guy was, checked into him without any bias and he's a terrible man. Even compared him to born and raised Muslim friends who are from the most extreme Islamic nation. I have tight friendships with them so they've spoken very openly to me in private, and it's Cat Stevens who makes Muslims look bad.
holy circumlocution batman! this is as close as the author will get, and in the passive voice no less.
i did enjoy his tunes in Harold & Maude. but i think Rushdie is right, he's a different person.
I think I forgive him for King of Trees alone. Anyone who wrote that can't be that bad.
Myself I'm starting to question the sense of judging people for their 'beliefs'. Two reasons: (1) most people deeply desire to gain social status and consequently will profess anything to secure it if we judge them in this way, (2) what are beliefs, anyhow? Do they even exist? If they do, why is it necessary to 'believe' things (i.e. to try not to question or criticise certain ideas, which is impossible in the long-term even if you stick your fingers in your ears).
As far as forgiveness of CS, well, whether I'm supposed to forgive someone or not, I prefer forgiving because I want to live in a world where we can be forgiven.
I find it interesting to contrast the joy of a track like "Night Comes In" with how humourless Cat Stevens became.
*although they never met to my knowledge
There is pressure by some oil-producing countries (notably Iran and Venezuela) to sell in a currency other than USD for political reasons.
It's interesting to note how Iraq's threat to start pricing oil in other currencies (was it the Euro they mentioned?) is widely regarded as one of the precursors to America's invasion and occupation.
So those "political reasons" you're alluding to work both ways.
Music aside, as a counterpoint to what looks like some carefully choreographed character assassination at the beginning of this thread, I'll add that I've been impressed by the calmness of his demeanour and what comes across as an open-hearted mindset, in the interviews I've seen of him (over the years).
The whole Rushdie thing was in one of the first big waves of Islamophobic in Europe, where latent prejudices (perhaps on both sides) were laid bare. Thats when I first heard the term "the Muslims are the new Jews of Europe".
When geo-politics became enmeshed (Iran, at a time when Iran was being widely prepped as "world most evil actor" by mainstream press), then positions on all sides became entrenched.
Not that I have any right to put words in his mouth, but I'm guessing thats something Yusuf Islam also fell into. Certainly his stance on that doesn't jive with everything I've heard him say, on many other topics, since.
Whats lost in this current retelling of the tale is how many (Christian) writers condemned Rushdie for what they say as a callous and calculated bid to insult for publicity's sake, and how many (Muslim) imam's went out of their way to condem both Rushdie (for his insults), the fatwa (for its incitement to commit a crime), and offered their own homes as a refuge.
All of that probably doesn't come across so clearly to Americans looking at things from afar.
Feel free to downvote away, but I just thought I'd a slight measure of context to whats looking like a very one-sided picture.
I guess it was either tour again or run for US President.
Stones' first album was 1964; Jagger and Richards were 20 or 21, born in `43.
I was surprised that such a song would be offered. I was, in fact, distracted by the song lyrics against the movie dialogue due to this and I'm not complaining about that. It was just so surprising, because Cat Stevens.
And I'm glad for it. The last I heard of him was getting stopped by TSA Theatre because of his life-change in name and perhaps religion change over a decade ago. Hearing his music in "pop culture" in "current year" is refreshing.
But then I occasionally enjoy some Rage Against The Machine, too, so I think it's fair to say I don't filter my music based on the ideology of the performer.
Maybe I should, though? Still thinking this one through.
Edited: fixed autocorrecto.
And I have both Cat Stevens and Rage in my collection. Some Rush, too.
Also there's a matter of money. Orthogonal to the question of whether it's possible to separate some art from the particularly awful philosophies of their authors, there's the issue that paying them for that art is almost certainly supporting the philosophy I find so abhorrent.
I do know that I don't hold the same opinions and beliefs of a lot of people. It's unrealistic — and inhuman —that I would dissociate myself from all of them.
People have many beliefs and weigh them differently. Trying to figure out a single line or lines to separate myself from others is clearly not going to be an easy task. I'd rather find things I have in common with people and build on those. Then hopefully we'll be able to come to terms on those that we don't. It seems hard to imagine that we could do the latter without at least some of the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens
Bad acid trips won't lead someone to change their life that drastically. (or so I've heard, not that I would know anything about that sort of thing).
“I’d had lots of good acid trips prior to that. But I made the mistake of trying some acid some friends of mine had homemade. That knocked me back, and I did sort of hibernate in an apartment in Kensington and spent quite a few months — maybe as much as a year — just playing bass.”
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11706204/Chris-Sq...
You don't need an artists permission to enjoy their older work, even if they themselves disavow it, especially not music. Ever since I was six I loved his voice and it never bothered me that he tried another life. Better that and to embrace it by choice than to live by default.
A bit later, he was denied entry into the United States. [1] The FBI diverted the plane and had him escorted off, then sent him packing.