Joel Hoard: The Cat’s in the bag

You see, it seems that Cat Stevens converted to Islam in 1977
and adopted the name Yusuf Islam. I don’t know about you, but
I think anyone who would willfully give up the glitz and glamour of
the folk music scene and abandon his Christian name in order to
follow his heart and become a contented, peace-loving Muslim has
got to be a terrorist.

Fortunately for us, the ever-vigilant Department of Homeland
Security agrees. After they discovered that Islam was on a flight
traveling from London to Washington on Tuesday afternoon, they
diverted the flight to Bangor, Me., where Islam was taken off the
plane and into custody. He was shipped back to London
yesterday.

Phew … that was a close call. Who knows what evil Mr.
Islam would have perpetrated if we had let him go on his merry
way.

Just take one look at some of the lyrics he recorded under the
Cat Stevens pseudonym and you can see how dangerous this man is.
For example, check out this excerpt from his hit song “Peace
Train:” “Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking
about the world as it is. Why must we go on hating? Why can’t
we live in bliss?” Whoa, slow done there, Chief. Where
exactly are you planning on driving that peace train? My guess is
right into the side of a skyscraper. And I can only assume songs
like “God is the Light” and “I Love Them
All” are nothing but terrorist communiqués.

As the story on CNN.com points out, “According to U.S.
officials, (Yusuf Islam) is an active supporter of Muslim
charities.” I’m sure Islam has been ducking and dodging
officials and channeling funds to these Muslim charities and that
it took Homeland Security years of spy work to uncover what he was
up to. Or maybe they just visited Islam’s Web site,
www.yusufislam.org.uk, where there is a list of the charities that
Islam donates to, among them Small Kindness, which provided aid to
2,500 orphans in Kosovo and residents of Turkey who were devastated
by a recent string of earthquakes. Sure sounds like a terrorist to
me. The nerve of this guy, trying to provide “regular meals,
housing, education and healthcare” to poor nations and to
“make a real difference and bring about positive change to
many people’s lives.” Thank goodness our
government’s putting an end to that.

We really should have seen Yusuf Islam as a major security
threat years ago. Right after Sept. 11, not only did he condemn the
terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on his Web site, on
VH1 and in the major media, but he also donated some of his
royalties for a Cat Stevens box set to Sept. 11 victims. Sounds
like somebody had a guilty conscience.

Maybe we didn’t catch on earlier because Islam was lying
low and hiding out in some far away place like a cave in the
mountains of Afghanistan or a spider hole in the Iraqi desert. He
certainly wouldn’t just live in a flat in central London,
from which he could emerge regularly to speak at events that are
open to the public or make television appearances.

The only way for us to respond to threats like Mr. Stevens/Islam
is to be more vigilant than ever. We cannot rest until every Osama
bin Laden and Cat Stevens is smoked out of his hole and punished to
the full extent of the law. Be on the lookout for any Muslims,
atheists, Buddhists, communists and all of the other –ists
you can think of.

But we can’t stop there. Sniff out the people with black
skin, brown skin, yellow skin or any other non-white skin and
report them to the authorities.

If the case of Cat Stevens has taught us anything, it’s
that you can’t even trust white people anymore. It used to
be, “If he’s white, he’s all right.” But
thanks to Mr. Stevens, now we can expect further division among the
white race. We’ll have a modern-day witch hunt complete with
plenty of wild accusations and finger pointing. But that’s
exactly what terrorists like Cat Stevens want. They want to breed
fear and mistrust. They want to divide us. Don’t let them. We
honest, God-fearing Americans need to stick together through this
difficult time. It’ll be a difficult war, but it’s a
war that we can win.

Hoard can be reached at
“mailto:j.ho@umich.edu”>j.ho@umich.edu.