Actually, Chris, only the first release of that 10,000 Maniacs album ("In My Tribe") included "Peace Train;" all subsequent releases had it removed. Darned fine album, with or without the song. I've seen copies of it both ways, but many more of them without than with.

I have to admit, I'm a little suspicious of all this. Yusuf Islam was traveling to Jerusalem with a VH1 "Behind the Music" film crew, for goodness sake. Hardly a mission threatening to Israeli national security. And as for the claims of financial support to Hamas, well, once a claim is made it's awfully hard to prove a negative, but I do know that great deal of his money goes to support the Islamia School, a Muslim school in London which he founded. The school was recently visited by Prince Charles, and is said to be of very high quality. True, its program includes religious instruction, but the same is true of some very excellent Catholic high schools I know of in the U.S. How much is left over for possible accused terrorist support? I've no idea, but funding for Hamas doesn't seem consistent with what I've read of Mr. Islam's current views on things.

Me I still love the guy's music. True, as Yusuf Islam he has embraced a very fundamentalist, taking-the-Quran-a-wee-bit-too-literally approach to Islam, one which I'm not at all comfortable with. He's embraced some causes and said some things that I don't like at all. But still, there's that school, and he has recently recorded music and done concerts for relief in Bosnia, and that's laudable regardless of the guy's religious beliefs.

And all too often, he seems to be the target of a reflexive anti-Muslim sentiment that's equally indulged on both the Right and the Left, and one which I find quite troubling. I'm not a Muslim, but I've found too many valuable lessons about love and kindness in the Quran, and in the words of Sufi mystics such as Hallaj, Rumi, and Hafez to go along with that sort of intolerance.

Me, I'm against religious intolerance even against the intolerant.

Another Chris