Salman Rushdie on Cat Stevens’ Rally Appearance: What Was Jon Stewart Thinking?
by John Nolte
—–
Maybe a better name for Jon Stewart’s rally would’ve been “Multicultural-Sensitivity Suicide Rally.” Or maybe Colbert wasn’t kidding about keeping the fear alive. According to Nick Cohen at Standpoint, Salman Rushdie, the author forced into hiding for years because of the Cat Stevens (Yusaf Islam) approved fatwa on his head, is just as confused as everyone else:
“I’ve always liked Stewart and Colbert but what on earth was Cat Yusuf Stevens Islam doing on that stage? If he’s a “good Muslim” like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar then I’m the Great Pumpkin. Happy Halloween.”
Stevens-Islam has been trying to backtrack from his comments for some time now, claiming they were some kind of joke. Does he look like he’s putting everyone on in that video? Rushdie isn’t buying the joke excuse either:
However much Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam may wish to rewrite his past, he was neither misunderstood nor misquoted over his views on the Khomeini fatwa against The Satanic Verses (Seven, April 29). In an article in The New York Times on May 22, 1989, Craig R Whitney reported Stevens/Islam saying on a British television programme “that rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, ‘I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing’.”







Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?