Reply #11: Yusuf Islam and Salman Rushdie... [View All]

[regnaD kciN]

I honor Stevens' decision to join the sect he joined, but I didn't much care for his calling for Rushdie's head on a platter.

Not to be too picky, but he actually didn't. He was asked about the fatwa against Rushdie, and, as a new convert, gave an explanation as to where Shari'a calls for the death penalty for blasphemy. He added "I think that's correct," as in "I think I cited the right passage." However, it was reported by the press that he had said that killing Rushdie would be "correct." In reality, he thought that the death penalty should not apply in this case, because Rushdie wasn't a Muslim living in an Islamic state, and that Muslims had no right to enforce Shari'a in non-Muslim countries (although he did think that Rushdie needed to "repent" and withdraw The Satanic Verses from publication).

I will grant, though, that Yusuf Islam made many extreme statements during his early years as a Muslim. On his web site, a few years ago, he admitted that he held a lot of overzealous opinions typical of enthusiastic new converts to a religion, and that he was now embarrassed by a lot of what he had said back then.