Cat Stevens- Yusuf Islam

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by maj123

Dear friends,
Thank you very much for yr comments, I see that your comments
is focused on Cat Stevens 's life as musician man, I think it's better if you talk on
what's the reasons that made him change his religion.

Nah. His music is much more interesting.

My top five Cat Stevens songs (in order)

1. If you want to sing out, sing out (from "Harold and Maude")
2. Oh Very Young
3. Moonshadow
4. Morning Has Broken
5. Peace Train

[ayani]

Originally Posted by maj123

Dear friends,
Thank you very much for yr comments, I see that your comments
is focused on Cat Stevens 's life as musician man, I think it's better if you talk on
what's the reasons that made him change his religion.

Because I think that changing one's religion indicates that he was not
satisfied with his previous religion?

I'm waiting for yr comments.
Regards

i recall a VH1 interview with Yusuf where he described his conversion as influenced by nearly drowning in an ocean. frightened he was going to die, he called upon God to save him and promised he would serve God in any way he could if he survived. he did survive, and went on to find Islam.

his music is amazing.

[maj123]

Thank you for your comments, in fact what interesting me more is the reasons that
Made this famous musician to change his religion.
So I do some searching and found the following :

http://www.mountainoflight.co.uk/talks_journey_4.html

When my brother came back to UK in 1976 there was a Festival of Islam taking place in London, everywhere were books about Islam. He saw the Qur’an in the bookshop and he said ‘That’s the Bible of the Muslims’. So, he decided to buy it and give it to me as a gift.

When I started to read the Qur’an, the first thing that I did was to try and keep an open mind because there were so many preconceived images already built up within me. Many are the times I’d visited my favourite spiritual bookshop in LA, called the Bhodi Tree, but never had I even bothered to look at the Islam bookshelf before. Perhaps that was because my father belonged to a Greek-Cypriot culture and, therefore, anything connected to Muslims was hostile to me.

But the more I read the Qur’an, the more it struck me, deep down. This was not quite that foreign religion which I had come to expect. First and foremost it was talking about belief in God, the Master of the universe; talking about humanity as one family. It mentioned many prophets, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad included, being brothers equally teaching the same message of unity to mankind, and all of us being the offspring of Adam and Eve.

"The innocent are here"

In the daytime time for celebration
No use looking down if it's over here
It's a world a new creation
And the golden light of the morning
Makes it easy to comb your hair
And the love of a child
It's the time of the year
In the daytime you can move a mountain
With a blink of your eye
Now it's over here now it's over there
It's a world with no complications
And the curtains on the window
Start blowing like your hair
And the love that I feel
Cause it's the time of the year
Mysterious moon found me crying in the dark
Heard my footsteps on the stairs
Mysterious moon found me crying
But the sun dried my tears
Showed he cares
In the daytime time for celebration
No use looking down children open your eyes
It's a world a whole nation
Now the white boats have landed
And the innocent are here
So dream for the child
Cause it's the time of the year

I was like many people in the West; blessed with immense material advancements, superb technology and highly evolved political systems, but brought up almost in a state of embarrassing poverty regarding knowledge and information about Islam. Images of Muslims as racial aliens, with strange religious customs, genies, magic carpets, moons and stars, war and bloodshed, the crusades, dominated my view - there was hardly anything presented to me which could be said to represent the Islam, until I actually discovered it when given an English translation of the Qur’an, back in 1976.
http://www.mountainoflight.co.uk/talks_celebrating.html