Fatwa train
Why is it the Telegraph that mentions such things? Where are the papers to the left of the Telegraph?
Nick Cohen is on the case.
Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity yesterday featured Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens singing “Peace Train”. Islam/Stevens previously showed his commitment to peace and sanity by saying that death was the appropriate punishment for Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemy”.
I’m hoping that Rushdie will drop a word to Stewart and Colbert and that they will say something – like perhaps that they didn’t realize that about Islam/Stevens and have no desire whatsoever to endorse fatwas on heretics or blasphemers or apostates.
Stevens has since issued a couple of misleading, wishy-washy quasi-denials or backtrackings (*) about his original statements. If pressed on the issue, Stewart or any other Stevens-enabler would simply say, “Well, he later explained that he didn’t really mean it and that the media twisted his words around.”
(*) Misleading because he originally said things like (paraphrasing) “If Rushdie showed up at my doorstep needing help, I’d call the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him where he was” and responded to a statement about Rushdie being burned in effigy that it would have been better if they had burned the real thing. Then, years later, he claimed that all he had ever done was express his understanding of Islamic law, that he hadn’t actually personally called for Rushdie to be assassinated. Total BS.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Fatwa train http://dlvr.it/7qNmj […]
Oh good lord (expressed as an athiest). Cat Stevens made objectionable comments 21 or more years ago.
And you’re never going to let him forget it, are you? He doesn’t hop through the loops of obsequieness you believe you are owed?
As we said in Montreal lo these many years ago (expression taken from NYC Yiddish) tough noogies.
Did you ask Salman Rushdie if he’s particularly frightened by the spectre of Cat Stevens?
This is one of those reports that I really, really wish was in the Guardian or Independent. I have to metaphorically put gloves on and a peg on my nose to read the Telegraph. Cohen does write interesting stuff, but this would have been far better coming from someone more “new left” like Johann Hari.
Um, objectionable comments? Openly calling for the murder of someone on TV, knowing there are fanatics out there willing and eager to do just that?
He has never apologised for it; he’s spent the last 21 years lying his ass off trying to deny he said what he clearly did, and he’s never denounced the fatwa.
I’ve pointed this out on some of the lefty blogs I follow, and hope it gets some more reaction than ” This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue over who tried to have who killed .”
Geoff, ‘Cat Stevens’ used his worldwide recognition as a pop singer to get maximum publicity for those serious, and presumably seriously held, views of his. In the light of his religion’s long track record of violent intolerance, a reluctant “‘spose it weren’t such a good idea – that is, saying something that would get misquoted and twisted” – or words to that effect is (ahem) not enough.
I look forward to him saying that killing someone for what they have said or written is always wrong, never justifiable, only supportable in terms of theocracy; moreover, that he was severely out of order, mistaken and probably in violation of the law in supporting the Rushdie fatwah. As well, he might add that he has recanted and given Islam the boot, both as a surname and creed.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Ian
I beg your freaking pardon. The last two sentences-“As well, he might add that he has recanted and given Islam the boot, both as surname and creed
“But I’m not holding my breath.”
No doubt you’re not. But really-who died and made you the supreme governor of other strangers creeds and, amusingly, what names they are allowed to use? You really are so arrogant that you think Cat Stevens should change his beliefs, and even his name, simply to satisfy whatever standards pop into your mind, whenever?
Somebody’s delusional, but it might not be Yosuf.
OK-I’ll try for the second time to see if critical comments aren’t immediately deleted.
Ian
I noticed with interest your final two sentences. To whit, “As well, he might add that he has recanted and given Islam the boot, both as surname and creed.
“But I`m not holding my breath`
Well. Ian, that`s probably a good idea. Nobody wants you to suffocacate in a fit of rage at the idea that somebody might think differently from you.
But I have to ask-who died and made you the supreme governer of what people think, and (more amusingly) what names they are allowed to call themselvesÉ
Funny how bossy you seem to want to be. Itès pretty much like how you believe that our new Islamic overlords will be, at least in your imagination.
Geoff: “Well. Ian, that`s probably a good idea. Nobody wants you to suffocacate [sic] in a fit of rage at the idea that somebody might think differently from you… [etc]”
Oh I see! Islam is just a different way of thinking! How stupid of me to hold an opinion otherwise.
I suggest you translate that into Farsi or Arabic and tell it to a woman about to be stoned to death or strung up on the end of a crane’s cable in Tehran, Riyadh or a variety of other suitable locations where unIslamic thinking and behaving gets the clerics into fits of rage, and of a most murderous kind.
You presume of course that if I am critical of Islam I am automatically an authoritarian anti-Islamic. How you might have got to that position boggles my mind. And though I haven’t a clue where you’re coming from, it’s bloody obvious where you’re headed.
Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam is a perfect example of a real world application of Steven Weinberg’s quote: “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. ”
From my knowledge of his career and behavior over the years I don’t get the impression that -minus the religion – he could be described as anything other than a good and compassionate human being. He was well known for being philanthropic with his money even in his Cat Stevens days. In my opinion he has taken a simplistic philosophy – Islam – on its word, as a religion of peace. ‘Islam’ as a word means submission and to submit to something like that has its advantages – it provides simple answers to all your questions (mostly Allah did it) and simple rules how to live your life – some of which are obviously compassionate – such as giving money to the poor. It also has many terrible rules and if you have submitted its not like Catholicism where you don’t really have to take all the items on the menu – in Islam you do. How you explain them to yourself or others must be painful (God said it so who are we to question His myserious ways?) but its a necessary part of submission to such a religion. The public reluctance of so many followers to confront such obvious barbarities, such as death to apostates and blasphemers, is testament to the fact that they know such rules are indefensible to those outside their religion.
In other words Cat Stevens IS a person of peace AND he supports someone being put to death simply for writing a book. It takes religion to do that.
To translate Geoff:
How dare you authoritarian atheists say encouraging people to kill someone for writing a book is wrong! How dare you call on Cat Stevens to apologise, you authoritarians!
You have no right to say killing people is wrong, that is imposing your Western cultural values on people. Really, how dare you!
I must admit, I felt uncomfortable when Cat Stevens with his nice beard hijacked the stage of an otherwise good-intention event. If Islam is such a peaceful religion, then try leaving it.
As for hippies and peace lovers, well Charles Manson was a hippy too. I hear he’s out and about living the American dream, so maybe he could have been invited on stage too, to sing some good old songs of peace and love.
Someone should tell Geoff that Haloween’s over and he can take off his dick costume now.
Was Stevens speaking as himself in that program or was he playing an assigned role? Geoffrey Robertson’s Hypotheticals are role-playing exercises. IIRC people don’t always play themselves.
I’ve only ever seen that clip, never the part of the show when Robertson set it all up. Just asking.
But Rushdie’s letter and the postscript to Nick Cohen’s piece look very bad. If Stevens really is like that, Stewart and Colbert should have had nothing to do with him.
As to why it’s the Telegraph that mentions such things? Maybe because it’s the sort of thing that interests their little-bit-racist readership. Nothing like a bit of righteous indignation about those dreadful Mussulmans to get the moustache bristling first thing in the morning.
I do agree, though, that the left-wing media is pissweak on Muslim fundies. It’s political correctness gone mad. One feels compelled to bring the situation to the letters editor of the Telegraph.
Maybe the Cat is trying to drum up money. I’ll stick with the LPs from 30 years ago and not add to whatever his present fortune is. Cat’s past words do cast a shadow on his present and I don’t think it was in good taste to have him perform.
Here’s Cat in a video looking pretty mortified about the whole thing (starting at 22 minutes in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcgCdn8I8kU
FWIW
This blog contains a video from the Hypotheticals show where Geoffrey Robertson asked him about Rushdie
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/10/30/video-riding-the-peace-train/
Geoff: no comments were deleted. You seem to have overlooked one that was posted.
About Salman Rushdie – it’s not that he’s “particularly frightened” about Stevens – it’s that he objects to the principle. Yes, he still objects to the principle. Decidedly.
Geoff sounds a lot like Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch. See how he’s not simply defending Muslims as people from being attacked, but is extending that defence to a religious ideology itself, by getting upset that we might not be impressed by ‘other strangers creeds’ and a ‘different way of thinking’.
This is what has happened to a whole section of ‘progressive’ thinkers today – descent into an airheaded, vacuous, politically correct creed of ‘tolerance’ at the expense of calling bullshit on authoritarian bollocks based on supernatural nonsense, which is what progressive thought was once all about (and by progressive, I of course mean Enlightenment thought).
This is also why it’s the Telegraph, as opposed to the lefty papers, that covers a lot of this stuff.
I don’t consider myself ‘the supreme governer of what people think’, but I still wish every Muslim in the world would give Islam the boot. How could I wish otherwise? Or claim to wish otherwise?
I watched both videos; it’s hard to understand how the man who made generations-inspiring music before and became actively humanitarian after is the same man with the hard look on his face as he supports the call of his religion of death to blasphemers. What he says about his comments in retrospect rings true for a new convert; he went the safest, most conservative path before growing into his new religion, so to speak (e.g., giving up all music at first, then only vocals and percussion, then back to using music as a tool to reach out to people). I would compare it to someone who converts to fundamentalist Christianity and supporting death to homosexuals at first before their basic humanity kicks back in and they dump the more intolerant aspects of their new faith.
I had always been a big fan of Cat Stevens (“Harold and Maude” is one of my five favorite movies and I still cry every time at the end when “Troubles” plays) and was mystified when he dropped his career and got religion. I think the documentary (thanks for the link Caudimordax) presents a good overview of the arc of his life so far, and while I don’t think he is being honest with himself about the Rushdie incident, does that still negate and define the rest of his life’s work? The story of his conversion to me highlights the positives and negatives of religion; he was inspired to do good deeds and believe awful things at the same time.
I don’t think Stewart/Colbert made a mistake in having him perform. I think Yusuf has the right to be judged by all his actions, not just the one egregious one, especially since he has subsequently distanced himself from that level of dogmatism. (Also, how could they resist the play on words of “Peace Train” “Crazy Train” and “Love Train?)
Grab the video of Yusuf Islam’s murder-promoting TV appearance before it gets removed – again – HERE.
Geoff’s comments are really interesting.
He hasn’t taken it back, so why should anyone “let him forget it”? And what does that have to do with believing one is owed obsequiousness? Yusuf Islam is the one who named himself Yusuf Submission, after all, and who would like to see other people killed for not submitting to his chosen religion, Submission. Who is really the more worried about obsequiousness here?
Gee, how adorable. People want to kill you for writing a book? People want to kill you for not respecting the religion of Submission enough? Tough noogies.
Cat Stevens is a perfect example of why the ideas of liberalism are incompatible with religion.
When a religious person is brought up in a liberal society, it does not make their religious view liberal, it only means they’ve compartmentalised their religion and their liberalism. Rather like a theistic scientist compartmentalises his religion and his science.
I am rather horrified at the complete naivete of not only liberals in general, but atheists who think that religion can co-exist peacefully in a liberal society. It is liberalism itself that creates a world where there are no enemies, only good and bad opinions. But in the real world, liberals have very real enemies.
Really, I’m guessing the reason Stevens/Islam was there was because a Peace Train/Crazy Train/Love Train medly simply doesn’t work if you have a John Legend filling in. I think we can pretty much discount there being any deep political agenda to the selection of performing artists, due to the fact that Ozzy Freaking Osborne was in the lineup.
While he’s never called for the death of Salman Rushdie, he’s certainly made enough violent statements over the years to at least be questionable, if we’re going to look at their past horrors.
Taken together, if we’re going to look for a political meaning, it seems to be one of fatwa, frenzied drug use, bat decapitation, and money money money. That’s…not really a clear message.
Ugh. I’ve watched the video where he “explains.” It was all a misunderstanding; he was just saying the Koran says so.
What he doesn’t get, what apparently doesn’t even cross his mind, is that given that the Koran says so, he never should have signed up in the first place. If he signed up without realizing that the Koran says so (like Lauren Booth, who is reading the Koran only now, after signing up), then he should have unsigned.
The voiceover on that video also says what the media always say when reporting these issues – the planned publication of Rushdie’s book “caused outrage.” Bullshit. People decided to be outraged (in advance of publication, so without even knowing what they were outraged about).
‘The voiceover on that video also says what the media always say when reporting these issues – the planned publication of Rushdie’s book “caused outrage.”
That’s definitely a fallacy of some kind: treating an inanimate book as if it were capable of causing outrage.
The pathetic fallacy? It’s pathetic at least.
I found a poster for the Peace Train event:
http://motivationalimage.com/old/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/clowntrain.png
I really don’t think that Jon Stewart needs to say anything at all for me to know that he doesn’t support fatwas, and the suggestion that he does comes across as a little weird. This may also explain why it had to be the Telegraph and Nick Cohen and not anyone to the left of them.
NOBODY is suggesting that Stewart is supporting fatwas. But we do have a real problem with his putting a supporter of fatwas on the stage. Should he put David Irving on the stage? How about Rev Phelps?
Shatterface, I think the real fallacy is not claiming an object can cause outrage but claiming that writers or cartoonists “cause outrage” merely by writing something that unreasonable people choose to find so “offensive” that it deserves silencing and punishment. More like begging the question, really – the media adopt the assumptions of the people making the stink. It may be just laziness and convention, but I wish they would do better.
Lauren Booth is only now reading the koran after converting? Seriously? I mean if anything qualifies for the label “stupid” I can’t think of a better example. I wonder after if her tiny brain can accommodate the horror and realisation that her lovely ‘spirituality’ is based on the writings of a warlord. Good luck with her attempt at deconverting, because you better be damn serious about your apostacy if you’re not at all serious about Islam.
Yup. She converted first, started reading after.
If he wanted his revolting opinions to be forgotten, he should have made better music. Then people would remember the music instead of the revolting opinions.
Totally not fair. Ozzy wrote War Pigs. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/black+sabbath/war+pigs_20019418.html I’d link, but the tools don’t work (puh-leeeaaase can we just use HTML?). Anyway, War Pigs is an anti-war song. Find a single frickin’ pro-war Sabbath song and then get back to me about how violent and evil Ozzy Ozborne was.
Plus, Black Sabbath made great music, and as I noted above, great music trumps revolting opinions. Assuming Ozzy had any revolting opinions to begin with, which, as I’ve already noted, hasn’t really been shown.
In general, people wearing all black with either no hair or lots of hair and a lot of metal hanging off their faces should not be assumed to be violent. Most of the people I know fitting this description are pacifists. Most of the vegans I know fit this description.
Apparently the link worked even though the link tool made my browser go completely crazy. Forget the request about HTML.
Yusuf’s own words:
“To safeguard the peace and security of the multi-religious society, Islam wisely prohibits the vilification of what people hold sacred, in order that people do not vilify or mock God the Almighty in return.”
http://www.yusufislam.com/faq/273809eee583b7b69df9270636e52cc5/
Is there a troll-language study guide or something? Why do they always write like twelve year olds?
Who do you think has reported on this travesty? CNN or Fox News?
The Daily Show?
Nope, it was Fox News. Sean Hannity had a field day.
‘Lauren Booth is only now reading the koran after converting? ‘
I think I’d like to sell time shares to people like Booth. People who don’t read the small print till after they’ve signed the contract are a gift.
1. Maybe Stewart was too young to know about Yusuf Islam and Rushdie. Much less when Cat Stevens was a start.
2. Cat Stevens was too sickly-sweet for my taste and even then never believed him.
3. I think that Lauryn Oates has grossly mischaracterized Nicholas Kristof.
4. Yusuf Islam is simply very confused and really has little to say. For example:
http://www.yusufislam.com/faq/273809eee583b7b69df9270636e52cc5/
This shows why you should never listen to Rock stars about what is the best religion or science.
And likewise you should never listen to scientists about what is the best rock (I mean, Layla??! really?)
All he really needed to do is disown that opinion. He has refused to do so. We all make mistakes, and I would accept it if he acknowledges that was wrong.
@Dan L – well, seeing as I’m one of those black clad musicians myself, you’re preaching to the choir.
Maybe he’s anti-war, but let’s face it, the Osborne has done some pretty weird stuff over the years. And my point overall is that I don’t think we can really expect rally organizers to take responsibility for absolutely everything objectionable in a performer’s past. If we had to use only performances of musicians who are un-obejctionable we’d be left with…who, exactly?
But if we’re going to argue that “good music trumps revolting opinions” then…well, why are we even having this discussion? There are many – granted, not really myself, but many – who would say that Cat/Yusuf made great music and that’s all that really counts.
And frankly, whether or not you think Stevens is reprehensible, “Peace Train” is a pretty iconic song, and it simply would not have done to have anyone else performing it. I’m not a huge fan of his music, but certainly “Harold and Maude” wouldn’t’ve been the same without it.
Stewart may not have known about Cat Stevens on Rushdie, but someone there should have. In any case he knows now, because Rushdie told him, and he doesn’t care. Since he did the “go fuck yourself” dance in honor of the “Revolution Muslim” death threats against the makers of South Park last April, that seems truly bizarre.
Fair enough. It’s actually a point I try to make when people badmouth a musician or composer’s career on the basis of personality. “You can’t even listen to Beethoven if you’re ideologically opposed to music written by arrogant jerks.”
LOL. And he doesn’t like the Stones. Unbelievable.
You simply cannot ignore someone who believes a writer should be killed for offending the religious feelings of others. It is an insidious aspect of his personality that is not redeemed by any musical talent or any other artistic inclination. To compare it with the musical preferences of an evolutionary biologist is utterly ridiculous
Saikat, it was a joke, not a comparison. I suspect the fatwa issue was known to the organizers of the rally but they, being comedians rather than human rights activists, simply felt that a joke of ‘Peace Train’ versus ‘Crazy Train’ was worth the risk of someone pointing out some uncomfortable truths about Mr Islams past. Yusuf Islam is obviously not a good example of an ideal ‘moderate’ but Ozzy Osbourne is likewise hardly a good example of a right wing Teabagger.
Sure I can. Lots of people believe writers should be killed for offending religious feelings and I ignore almost all of them. In fact, I don’t even know who most of them are, so I don’t really have a choice.
But what you’re saying is completely irrelevant to what you’re responding to. Whether or not I ignore the political or religious opinions of musicians has no bearing on the quality of the music itself. For example, I wouldn’t tell people that they shouldn’t listen to Wagner because he was a notorious anti-semite. If I told people not to listen to Wagner’s music, it would be because I thought Wagner’s music was bad.
Right. I totally forgot that this was entirely a musical concert, utterly bereft of political undertones.
The post you responded to said nothing about Stewart’s publicity stunt and wasn’t intended to.
Just relax and try to enjoy the frickin’ music, OK?