Yusuf Islam addresses Salman Rushdie controversy in new song
Music veteran YUSUF ISLAM has addressed the media furore over his comments about SALMAN RUSHDIE in a new song 25 years after he was accused of supporting a fatwa against the author.
Rushdie went into hiding after his 1988 book The Satanic Verses made him a target for Islamic extremists who proclaimed him a blasphemer and issued a fatwa death sentence against him.
The singer, formally known as Cat Stevens, waded into the debate during a talk at a university in the UK in 1989, when the Islam convert made a series of comments which appeared to support the fatwa, and the headline-grabbing remarks sparked a media furore.
The Peace Train singer has now opened up about the scandal in a song on his new album, Tell 'Em I'm Gone.
In the track, Editing Floor Blues, the Peace Train star sings, "One day the papers rang us up/t'check if I said this. I'd never say that!/... but they never printed that."
Islam tells the New York Daily News, "As opposed to just talking to a journalist, this lets me speak from the heart. It helps me to explain... I did not support the fatwa... I'm a supporter of law and order."