Blogcritics: Comments on Cat Stevens, enemy

Comment by mounia mahroug

Tue, 6 Sep 2005 15:10:03 EDT

cat stevens is not a terrorist, he is a muslim, but this does not mean that he is terrorist, bc muslims are not all terrorists, just those who don t understand ISLAM

Comment by Big Time Patriot

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:45:19 EDT

I just want to add, that if Kenny G ever became a Moslem we should add him right to the list for the same reasons as this article gives for the Artist Formerly Known As Cat Stevens. But instead of belaboring the past like a liberal trying to tell the truth about Bush's cowardly service record, I will hope that Kenny G flies in peace...peace and QUIET!!

Comment by Lono

Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:26:34 EDT

Al, well said! That was some seriously funny shit, and my favorite writing of yours in some time. To be fair, your readers should start with my piece here. * postscript Sept 28th - I was right! Cat Stevens was not and is not the enemy. It was a typo, news here. When will you people get it? I am correct! Learn it, know it, love it!

Comment by Al Barger

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 23:16:00 EDT

Hamas may be primarily focused on Israel, though evil Islamic terrorists tend to run together. However, is Hamas not still on the official US feces list for blowing up hundreds of US soldiers in their sleep in Lebanon? That's probably more than any army of Saddam's has managed. Anybody knowingly contributing to Hamas is literally buying culpability for the murders and other crimes commited by this group. That's rapidly approaching a point where I'll consider them outside of many protections of civil society. I don't make any claim to knowledge about the activities of Mr Islam. Just this week with Eric Olsen's reports on this story have such accusations come to my attention. If he has in fact provably been contributing to Hamas though, he should consider himself fortunate that being expelled was the worst he faced. In the original post, I'm just goofing on him for his cheesy music. However, contributing money to support one of the two or three most egregious terrorist groups going is damned serious business. I would tend to take a much less tolerantly bemused outlook.

Comment by godoggo

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:58:00 EDT

BTW for what it's worth, Hamas I understand is anti-Israel, not anti-US, and has both charitable wings and terrorist wings, which would I suppose give credence to the claim in the discussion I linked to that he did not intend his donations to terrorists, let alone the WTC bomber (vague about how the money ostensible got to him - incidentally, this isn't exactly an original observation, but he don't deport citizens who contribute to the IRA). Which is hairsplitting, I guess, but the point is not that I have sympathy for the guy but that I don't believe that all this makes us safer. Maybe if we could control his money somehow (yet another idea I stole from Matt's discussion)?

Comment by godoggo

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 22:36:55 EDT

Just thought I'd note that some commentors in this discussion over at Matt Yglesias today voiced some reasonable-sounding skepticism over the Hamas donations. Also, this may well be BS, but I remember Cat saying that he had been misinterpreted regarding the Rushdie fatwa, that he'd been asked about it before he'd heard what it was about, and had responded generally that he supported whatever the Ayatollah said. So the guy's a creep at best, maybe worse,and I can't get too excited about this particular case, but the thing is that's it's not an outlier; much worse has been done to completely innocent people who didn't happen to be famous (at which point I suppose I should be providing links of my own, but it was some time ago that I read about it, and I don't feel like searching).

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:32:10 EDT

Hands up, how many of you are Roman Catholics? And of those, how many know what a Papal bull is? And how many of those put a rubber on your willy? Then you've violated a fatwah you evil hell bound scum (or you could ask Jack Chick how he would describe your subservience to the Whore of Babylon). They still haven't finished pumping all of the semen out of Rod Stewart's stomach, and you're all beating up some Yusef Islam because you're too afraid of some bow-tied, suit wearing member of Nation of Islam kicking your ass.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:25:13 EDT

Rodney, that was about my experience of him as well - he claims to have mellowed, and he now embraces his past because it pays good royalties, which he can then turn over to charities, some of which are fronts for Hamas and/or the blind shiek

Comment by Chris Kent

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 17:32:52 EDT

Did you know Cat Stevens was really just Don McLean in makeup?

Comment by Rodney Welch

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 16:54:05 EDT

Give the man once known as Cat Stevens his due: i Teaser and the Firecat, Tea for the Tillerman and i Buddha and the Chocolate Box were pretty good albums, as I remember -- and "Peace Train," "Moonshadow," "Wide World," and "Longer Boats" were terrific songs from that time. He was an idol of mine back then, although I pretty much stopped caring after i Foreigner, and when he went all fundamental Islam on me and rejected his entire past -- the clear sign of a fanatic -- he pretty much lost me for good. He says now he never supported the Ayatollah's fatwa in the Rushdie affair, but I followed that case pretty closely and I seem to recall him not only saying it but defending it, and even at one point, expressing his pleasure that people were burning his old records. He liked seeing his past obliterated, I guess. I think of him as being like "King Tut" on Batman; I keep wishing a pot would fall on his head and he'd remember who he really is.

Comment by bhw

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:22:14 EDT

prince = masculine lol, al....

Comment by Al Barger

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 12:41:00 EDT

Shark, how do you take Prince for "girlie-man" music? He's a very masculine character.

Comment by Andrew Ian Dodge

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 11:23:13 EDT

Mark, he has a variety of musical tastes?

Comment by Mark Saleski

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:25:11 EDT

wait though...not only did al have that Prince poster on his wall, he also had the sorta-dead-chick poster from Black Sabbath's We Sold Our Sould for Rock and Roll. i have no idea what that means though (probably, nothin').

Comment by Shark

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:04:23 EDT

Al, regarding your glorification of Macho Music -- It's especially ironic coming from someone who worships Prince. You're really a girlie-man at heart.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 08:30:25 EDT

Musically, Jim Croce is unworthy of washing Cat Stevens's underwear

Comment by Al Barger

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 23:46:45 EDT

Jim, I'll cut Jim Croce some slack. He did some fluffy stuff, but the two main songs that are constantly played on the radio are both pretty masculine. "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" after all is the baddest man in the whole damned town. I can work with that. And of course everybody knows that "You Don't Mess Around with Jim."

Comment by MDM

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 18:02:14 EDT

Mr. Carruthers: Such a good point you make. I'll just bet John Ashcroft personally funds suicide bombers and advocates assassinations of the author of novels routinely! Probably does it under an alias! Maybe there's a paper trail! Somebody get CBS news division onto this right away!

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 17:26:29 EDT

in his midlife re-incarnation as a medieval-minded, murder-condoning religious bigot. So he's doing an album with with John Ashcroft? Kewl! Good thing Ashcroft has music to keep him distracted from doing anything really destructive.

Comment by MDM

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 17:18:46 EDT

As I see it, Cat's less-known, very early stuff has held up (Mona Bone Jakon album, e.g.--see the title track and the song "Trouble" in particular), but not the sappy (if catchy) stuff that made him famous. I was into his music in a big way back then (early 70s), because it was great music to learn guitar from. But I never listen to it or play it anymore. His big hits all seem very fluffy these days--and he probably disavows them himself, in his midlife re-incarnation as a medieval-minded, murder-condoning religious bigot.

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:38:54 EDT

So how soon 'til we see the Don McLean Musician No-Fly Act (they wanted to call it the "American Pie Act", but those damn, filthy-minded kids ruined it for everybody).

Comment by Eric Olsen

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:29:36 EDT

you tell him Greg, "Morning Has Broken" has made me cry before - in a good way

Comment by greg

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:23:31 EDT

Morning Has Broken is a great old hymn penned by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). If you're going to slag a cover of this excellent tune, why not go after Art Garfunkel?

Comment by Eric Olsen

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 16:04:11 EDT

sadly, in an administrative oversight, John Denver missed his own no-fly list

Comment by Jim Carruthers

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 15:56:51 EDT

I bet you give thanks every day that Jim Croce and Harry Chapin are already dead. Hey, has anybody checked to see if those two are on the no-fly list? It would be really funny if John Denver was.