September 22, 2004
terror and the firecat
Reuters reports that Yusuf Islam, nee Steven Georgiou but best known as singer/songwriter Cat Stevens, was placed on a no-fly list and deported to the UK today, by US officials who believed his activities could be "linked to terrorism."
It has been something like 30 years since Cat Stevens was famous for popular hit songs like Morning Has Broken, Peace Train, Moonshadow, and the oddly infectious Banapple Gas. I grew up on that stuff, and it's difficult for me to imagine the person that wrote these songs could become a Hamas-supporting terror threat. Here's Islam on his conversion to Islam:
By the late seventies, it became apparent to fans that he had retired and had rejected the music industry. Stevens disagrees and explains his choices, "A lot of people felt when I became Muslim that I'd turned my back. But what I was trying to do was live up to the moral objectives which I'd set for myself, which a lot of my songs were about. You can't keep on singing. At some point you've got to do it. My big mistake was not being able to communicate clearly my reasons and my rationale. I was floating on a cloud and didn't know how to get people to float on the cloud with me. "Looking back at my words, I saw I was actually a Muslim even before I embraced Islam -- I just had to be uncovered."
Trying to live up to his moral objectives instead of just singing about them... Wow, sure sounds like a threat to national security, eh? On the face of it, this looks to be yet another example of US policy gone awry: arbitrary hard-line actions that alienate moderate Muslims and give them yet more reason to despise Americans and our attitude toward their world.
Or maybe it was the drug references...
Banapple gas, oh Banapple gas Everybody's sniffing it Banapple gas O-o alas! All the world is stuck on it Banapple gas
Or maybe we'll learn something unexpected in the coming days, who knows. Reality outstrips my imagination regularly anymore.
Posted by Gene at September 22, 2004 05:33 PM | TrackBackIt sounds like you somehow missed the big stink he caused several years ago by endorsing the fatwah issued against Salman Rushdie. That doesn't say this incident wasn't politically motivated, but you shouldn't be so surprised.
What I want to know is why, if he is such a threat, do they let him get on the plane in the first place?
Posted by: AndyF at September 23, 2004 12:07 PM
They failed to recognize him before boarding the plane-- it was actually a member of the flight crew that identified him while they were en route, from what I've read. They then diverted the plane to Bangor, which is the usual stopover point for Transatlantic flights that have had incidents with passengers (usually for disorderly drunks, etc.)
But aside from the question of whether he should have been detained (not clear to me either way), it clearly reveals a shortcoming or error in security in the boarding process. If he were a real terrorist, an en route discovery would likely have been too late.
Posted by: Toosh at September 23, 2004 02:07 PMGuess I missed the fatwah incident, well that does shed a slightly different light on things. Of course, it's really no surprise that the whole watchlist/no-fly list process is badly broken. Do we really expect malefactors to fly under their true names, rather than "John Smith"?
Posted by: Gene at September 24, 2004 03:49 PM