Subject: RE: BS: Terrorist Cat Stevens Booted...
From:
Shanghaiceltic
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 07:41 PM
Here is an artilce that appeared in the Telegraph on-line giving his version of events.
'Terrorist? They wanted my autograph'
(Filed: 18/10/2004)
Yusuf Islam – the former Cat Stevens – talks to Christa D'Souza about his bemusement at being refused entry to the United States
Yusuf Islam has always loved Britain. But never, he says, as much as when he stepped on to the tarmac at Heathrow last month, after what he wryly calls his "little trip to the States".
Islam - formerly known as Cat Stevens - was flying from London to Washington on September 21 with his 21-year-old daughter when the FBI, having learnt that he was on board, ordered the pilot to divert the Boeing 747 to a small airport in Maine, 600 miles away, on "national security grounds".
After being escorted from the plane, separated from his daughter and questioned by FBI agents, he was denied entry to America, transferred to Boston and placed on the first plane back to England.
A spokesman for the US Department for Homeland Security said that Islam had been placed on a "watch list", compiled to combat terrorism, "because of his recent activities" - he was only allowed to board the plane to Washington because of a misspelling of his name at Heathrow.
It was not his first brush with immigration: he was deported from Israel in 2000 after claims that he had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas 12 years earlier, though he has always vehemently denied the claim: "I have never knowingly supported any terrorist group, past, present or future," he stated.
He says he was shocked when the pilot announced that they were diverting to Maine, and very frightened by the way he was treated. "Nobody has apologised yet, but that's the way things work in the States," he says, in his gentle, Cockney-tinged accent. "People there don't know how to turn around. It's such a different approach here; a maturity exists within the British psyche. Over here, even on the political level, the reaction is that what happened is just wrong."
At least no one was abusive. Some of the officers even asked for his autograph. "They were sort of enamoured a little bit," he says. "The older ones, I'm sure, had my records, because they knew the whole catalogue."
We are sitting in the drab, Sixties-style lounge of the Brondesbury Park hotel in Willesden, north-west London, a property Islam owns and is planning to develop into flats. Despite the smart tweed jacket, the expensive-looking watch, the perfect teeth - which he had fixed in America just before his conversion in the Seventies - and the polished tan loafers, 56-year-old Islam still looks every inch the devout Muslim, with his long beard, his pudding-bowl fringe and round, silver-rimmed spectacles.
Cat Stevens, the shaggy, denim-shirted troubadour responsible for hits such as Moonshadow, Wild World and I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun, became Britain's most famous convert to Islam in 1977. Since then, he has done masses of work for the Muslim community, using the proceeds from his record sales to set up three Islamic schools in north-west London, and promoting his charity, Small Kindness, which provides humanitarian relief to orphans and families in regions of conflict.
Via his website, one can also buy tickets to the lecture he is delivering tomorrow night in aid of Sargent Cancer Care for Children. Entitled "Road To Find Out" and based on a song from his multi-platinum album Tea For The Tillerman, it will cover his life as one of the world's most famous pop stars and explain the reasons why he gave it all up. It will also, he hopes, send out the message that, contrary to what certain tabloid newspapers might have you believe, people such as Abu Hamza are not the face of Islam. "That's extremism on the part of the media," he sighs, "freezing an image which is already distorted and portraying it as the face of a community that has such a vast variety of talents, knowledge and depth." Most Muslims, he adds, are as much in favour of peace and harmony as everyone else and are appalled at violence committed in the name of Allah.
"The Koran says don't be the one who raises the weapon, be the one who is sacrificed. But then, how many people in this country know that killing can never be done in the name of Islam; or that, in Islam, unless there is a law or reason for it, or unless someone is defending themselves, the taking of a single life is the same as if you're killing the whole of humanity? Or that suicide is absolutely prohibited? It takes time," he admits, "to evolve an Islamic culture within something that is so well established as the British psyche and culture."
Charity work takes up most of Islam's time
The son of a Greek-Cypriot restaurateur and his beautiful Swedish wife, Steven Demetre Georgiou and his two siblings grew up in the heart of Soho above the family café, Moulin Rouge. Although their father was Greek Orthodox and their mother Swedish Baptist, the three children were sent to a Roman Catholic school. They were also taught to be prejudiced towards Muslims. "That symbol of the moon and stars always kind of frightened me," Islam recalls. Working in the café from the age of 10, he remembers singing and composing tunes while on washing-up duty.
At 15, his father bought him a guitar and, a year later, he wrote his first hit song: The First Cut Is The Deepest, recorded first by P P Arnold and then Rod Stewart. By 1967, after scoring a hit single with Matthew and Son, he had become, at the age of 19, and using the stage name Cat Stevens, a fully fledged pop star, selling millions of records and being mobbed by screaming fans. A naturally shy, introverted soul, he would drink a bottle of port mixed with brandy (a trick taught to him by Jimi Hendrix) in order to get up on stage and perform.
After contracting TB, which nearly killed him, in 1968, he began seriously to question the life he was leading. Despite having a love for gambling, alcohol and beautiful women - former girlfriends included Carly Simon and Patti D'Arbanville, who went on to become Mick Jagger's girlfriend - the rock star image was one with which he felt increasingly uncomfortable. After another brush with death - this time while swimming off Malibu, where he was very nearly drowned by a strong current - he decided he wanted out.
His brother gave him a copy of the Koran and, in 1979, after becoming a Muslim, he married Fawzia Ali, the daughter of a Surbiton accountant whom he first spotted at the Regent's Park mosque where he prayed. They now have five children, aged from 16 to 24, all of whom have been educated at one of their father's single-faith schools. The eldest, Hasanah, was married three years ago, just like her father, in an arranged union.
In the early days of his conversion, Islam was, by his own admission, far more hardline in his views. He wore full Arab dress, didn't pick up a musical instrument (having auctioned off all the ones he owned to charity), and would only ever agree to be interviewed by male journalists. "I was so ecstatic, so engrossed in what I discovered, that I left everybody behind," he says.
Nowadays, he watches quite a bit of television, records music - either in his studio or on a portable piano that he carries round in his briefcase - and loves to perform. He has recorded a new version of Father and Son with Ronan Keating, which is currently the bookmakers' favourite to be this year's Christmas number one. He also enjoys going to the theatre. The last thing he saw was Mamma Mia, the Abba musical. He has plans for a musical based on his own songs, and hopes to get a producer involved in the next year.
"But it will have to somehow educate people or I'm not going to do it," he says. "I mean, for God's sake, this is not just a way to make money."
All in all, he is the very image of moderate British Islam, reconciling tradition with integration. His treatment at the hands of the American authorities angered Muslims in the UK and threatened to become a minor diplomatic incident when the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told US Secretary of State Colin Powell that the action "should not have been taken".
The Americans, meanwhile, insist they have a case - the Department for Homeland Security claims that it has "come into possession of recent information that raises concerns against him [Islam]".
"Yeah, well," says Islam, those feline eyes, which my schoolmates and I used to melt over, glinting with determination, "we can only follow the legal path to get this unravelled. We're going to have this raised in the House of Lords. I just want some clarification, you know?"
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