Thoroughly modern Mr Islam
First the good news: Cat Stevens has been back in the recording studio to produce his first album since 1977. Now the less good news, at least from a pop-lover’s point of view: it is a largely spoken narrative called The Life of the Last Prophet. EMI is interested and it may well prove a commercial success, but Tea for the Tillerman it isn’t.
For Cat Stevens , of course, will never make another record, never return to those wonderfully simple, achingly innocent songs that reverberated through bedsitterland in the mid-70s. He, in effect, died in 1977 when Steven Georgiou, the superstar who had adopted the nom-de-stylus Cat, converted to Islam and abandoned the decadent lifestyle of a pop icon.
To interview Cat 20 years ago, you would have been overlooking the bay in Rio, where he lived as a tax exile. Now, to meet his reborn self, Yusuf Islam, you have to journey to the heart of Kilburn, north London, where the Islamia School which he founded in 1983 is based.
All the breathless, met-him-on-a-jet interviews with pop-star Cat stressed his inarticulacy. This man, slim and fit and immaculately dressed in white jellaba, with just a few streaks of grey in his bushy beard, is either an imposter or someone who through faith has found a new coherence. He is relaxed, charming, focused. When he plays a snatch from The Life of the Last Prophet, he is more than focused – he is transported. We are on different wavelengths: the question, how could you give it all up, has no meaning. “I still have a soft spot for the old way of life,” he admits, “but Islam cures you of any pride.” But surely being back in the recording studio must have given him a buzz, a desire to let the good times roll again? No, it gave him a headache – he’s a perfectionist, a control freak, and the pursuit of perfection can be painful.
Even after a silence of 17 years, he receives letters from fans: “They express gratitude for the heritage of my catalogue, which they believe has helped them through personal or spiritual difficulties. Many reflect on the words and can sympathise, as I can, with people who are going through those phases.”
The son of a Greek Cypriot father and Swedish mother who ran a restaurant in London’s West End, he was already a star in his late teens. Matthew and Son was a hit in 1967 when he was just 19, and in the seventies he produced a string of albums that sold millions across the world. But he never mastered the trappings of stardom. In an interview in 1972, at the height of his fame, he described the strains caused by a serious bout of TB two years earlier: “I nearly went mad. I began to find that I could not be at ease with myself.”
The headlines proclaimed “a cool Cat”, but the smaller print revealed a reluctant superstar who always felt uncomfortable on stage and disliked the pressures of an adoring public. “The hyped existence of the pop star is difficult to sustain,” he says now. “Getting out was a great escape – the lifestyle was unnatural. There are so many expectations and you can’t possibly satisfy them all.
“I was a seeker after success and music allowed me to achieve that. But gradually I realised there was more to being human than the life of this world – things to do with morality, with ethics, with ultimate and absolute answers. I wasn’t satisfied with the religion I was born with, Greek Orthodoxy. Until I came into contact with Islam, I’d been writing my own religion as I went. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when I finally found what I was looking for, I said hey, I don’t need this carcass any longer.”
The moment of enlightenment came in 1976 when his brother gave him a copy of the Koran as a present. “Islam was clear and simple and the message was plain – there was only one God and your duty is to worship him and the way of life he has prescribed in Islam, as the final, complete religion. I was convinced Islam had the overview, that this was indeed the last message sent by God to guide us, and that it was not just for the Arabs but could be embraced by anyone.”
He converted and, after a brief attempt to combine music with his new faith, gave up recording and performing. He says that music is not forbidden in Islam, but that the use of instruments and music for entertainment only are proscribed. In any case he was finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile two opposing worlds: “It was hard to give up, but it was easier to give it up totally than to do it half-heartedly. I am a one hundred per center. I like to do things completely and as perfectly as possible, even though we always fail.”
He married a Muslim woman from central Asia called Fawzia – he says it was not an arranged marriage but a “chaperoned encounter” – and they settled in north London. Far from being reclusive, he has become a high-profile spokesman for the British Muslim community and sees The Life of the Last Prophet as a means of conveying truths about Islam.
As well as appealing to Muslims, he hopes that it will help to explain Islam to a West that is increasingly fearful of it. “I want to communicate, to dispel some of the misconceptions about Islam which have taken root because of political events in the Muslim world. To judge Islam by that is wrong. You have to go back to the life of the Prophet to see what was the model of Islamic society – how it works, what the rules are, what the beliefs are.
“Many people in the West are terribly confused about how to perceive Islam – how does it relate to them, is it going to overtake them, destroy western civilisation? The struggle of different Muslim communities in different regions to assert their Islamic identity may look threatening. So there is a need to explain the basics of the religion, and you couldn’t get more basic than to go back to the life of the Prophet himself.”
Perhaps lifting the death sentence over Salman Rushdie would ease tensions? For once, he looks a little discomfited – a rash of “Cat says Rushdie must die” headlines when he spoke out in support of the fatwa has left its mark. But he cannot bring himself to forgive the alleged blasphemer. His condemnation is more considered now, and veiled in metaphor, but he still believes Rushdie must withdraw The Satanic Verses and repent. What about the suggestion that supporters of the fatwa should be tried for incitement to murder? “If a person in the 20th century is being chased because he says that the Ten Commandments should still apply, then I say there is something seriously wrong.”
For a man so obviously at ease with himself and his faith, Yusuf Islam has to fight many battles. He is not averse to litigation: he recently sued Private Eye and a French magazine over an allegation that he was involved in gun-running to Muslim rebels in Afghanistan and he has just embarked on an action against his record company alleging under-payment of royalties on the still buoyant sales of his back catalogue.
His campaigns on behalf of Muslim causes are numerous. He has waged a 10-year fight, so far unsuccessful, to win government funds for the Islamia School, and lobbied western governments on behalf of Bosnia – “a nation newly born which has been thrown to the wolves”. He is also a fervent letter-writer to newspapers, correcting what he feels are misrepresentations of his or his fellow Muslims’ position.
Despite his search for “ultimate answers”, he is very much of this world. He is clearly a hands-on manager, and it is perhaps symbolic that the two books behind him in his office at the school are the Koran and Croner’s Management of Voluntary Organisations. He makes a point of saying that when he converted to Islam, which frowns on usury, he had to take his money out of interest-bearing accounts and invest it in business ventures, take risks rather than watch it grow incrementally. His religion will lead to spiritual salvation, but it will deal with this world along the way.
Above all it is the school, which teaches a “moderate Islamic syllabus”, that absorbs him. He is keen to stress its GCSE successes. Every detail matters: when the photographer moves a chair to set up a shot and exposes several months’ accumulated dust, the school’s proud founder is horrified; the cleaners will, you feel, be receiving a lecture. His five children, four girls and a boy, all attend the school. Indeed, concern for their education was the key factor in his decision to establish it. He believes that Muslims are discriminated against in education, and contrasts the government’s refusal to give support to Islamic education with its backing for Catholic and Jewish schools.
The current furore over whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear headscarves in French schools – a ban by the authorities has led to protests – is, he says, a further example of the West’s bias. “If the prayer cap and the crucifix can be worn, then Muslim women should be allowed the same rights,” he argues. “The real conflict is whether a woman should be dressed or undressed when she walks in the street – that is what is biting at the French psyche, this insatiable appetite for sex. Islam expects women to be dressed in public to preserve modesty and respect. You would hardly see a statue of Mary without a veil, and who can point the finger of blame at her?”
He says Islam recognises the integrity of other religions and can co-exist happily with them, but Muslims in the West should be more confident about proclaiming their faith. “For a long time we have been encircling ourselves. Muslims have been at a great disadvantage because many have come here as immigrants and they feel they shouldn’t offend the host community. Yet Muslims have a lot to offer. Islam should be clearly heard and understood.”
Some in the West would rather not hear the message, especially if it appears to endorse fatwas and fundamentalism. But he refuses to be silenced. “People keep having a go at me. If I went round singing Morning Has Broken they would stop their attacks. But that’s not fair – that’s blackmail.”
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