January 12, 2009, - 3:45 pm
USA Today Gushes Over Pop Music’s Biggest HAMASnik (and HAMAS Financier)
By Debbie Schlussel
It’s ironic that during the HAMAS-Israel War, USA Today chooses to gush over Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens a/k/a Stephen Georgiou, as if he were the greatest thing since sliced falafel.
Instead of being told about how Stevens is barred from Israel for being the money mule for HAMAS there, we’re treated to the name of Islam’s Jewish kapo manager, David Spero, and claims that he is a moderate Muslim who is serving as an “ambassador.”
David Spero, Yusuf’s manager, sees maturity, not a radical personality change. “Cat Stevens was the voice of a generation, and Yusuf is a voice of that same generation grown up,” he says.
After nearly drowning off the coast of Malibu in 1976, the singer turned to Islam and found “a message to the human heart” in a copy of the Quran his brother gave him. “It didn’t have any connection to politics or global issues or the continuing turbulence in the Middle East,” he says. “That wasn’t the issue.”
Yusuf initially ducked public scrutiny when he became a Muslim. . . .
When controversies erupted, Yusuf often served as a Muslim ambassador to the West, sometimes unintentionally inflaming relations (his comments on the Salman Rushdie fatwa), but usually offering healing words, as he did after 9/11.
The terror attacks “were a turning point,” he says. “The message was: We better get to know each other before we destroy each other. The people in the middle, who are the majority, woke up to that. Unfortunately, a few leaders at the time didn’t represent that point of view.”
While he struggles to explain Islam’s tenets, he isn’t an apologist for Muslims and says he’s frustrated that “they can point fingers but very rarely say, ‘Perhaps I can do something to bridge the gaps.’ ” . . .
“We yearn for happiness, beauty, peace, love,” he says.
Barf.
Edna Gundersen, USA Today’s longtime music writer, apparently needs a refresher that this, um, “ambassador” and “moderate” praised HAMAS to ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas and, again, was a HAMAS money mule. And that’s in addition to his open hatred of Jews (except, of course, his enabling Jewboy manager).
From my 2004 column on Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens:
He’ll apparently ride the “Peace Train” only if there aren’t any Jews or other “infidels” anywhere near the tracks. . . . In 1988, the singer of “Peace Train” authored an “informational pamphlet,” called “Eyewitness,” containing these peaceful words:
The Jews seem neither to respect God nor his creation. Their own holy books contain the curse of God brought upon them by their prophets on account of their disobedience to Him and mischief in the earth. We have seen the disrespect for religion displayed by those who consider themselves to be ‘God’s chosen people.’…There will be no justice until all the land is given back to its rightful owners… Only Islam can bring peace back to the Holy Land.
It’s not just what Islam ne Stevens wrote in the anti-Semitic pamphlet, it’s for whom he wrote it: the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a HAMAS front-group with ties to Al-Qaeda. . . .
In May 1999, Stevens/Islam was the keynote speaker at the “Second ‘United for Al-Quds Conference.'” Al-Quds is the Islamic name for Jerusalem. The conference was sponsored by the “Who’s Who” of America’s radical Muslim groups which support terror and refuse to denounce HAMAS and Hezbollah (which murdered over 300 American marines and civilians in the 1980s, while they slept).
From my 2006 column on Yusuf Islam a/k/a Cat Stevens:
In 1989, a week after Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa for the murder of “Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie, Islam agreed:
He must be killed. The Koran makes it clear: If someone defames the prophet, he must die.
And Islam’s views haven’t changed much. A map of the Middle East currently on his website doesn’t recognize Israel. There is only “Holyland” on his Map of Hate. In 2004, Islam told ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas that he supports HAMAS. . . .
A May 2003 expose on Islam in GQ documented his many ties to Osama Bin Laden and HAMAS. The author–Jake Tapper, now with ABC News–detailed Islam’s tight relationship with Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, the leader of the London based Al-Muhajiroun, which is believed to be Al-Qaeda in Britain. Bakri organized the famed London celebration of “The Magnificent 19” on the 1-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Islam was denied entry into Israel twice because on two previous trips there, he met with senior HAMAS officials and donated money to them, according to Israeli court documents. One of those officials, Sheikh Jamil Hamami, is a key figure in the federal investigation of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which President Bush shut down and designated as a global terrorist entity laundering money to HAMAS.
Nice try, USA Today. But you can’t whitewash a financier of mass murder, no matter how cheesy and girlie-manish his songs are.
Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam = HAMAS and other Islamic terrorism.
Just before the first Iraq war, didn’t I see film of him being very chummy with Saddam Hussein?
mplumb on January 12, 2009 at 4:26 pm