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[Henk Elegeert]

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  From Cat Stevens to Yusuf Islam

BBC News Online profiles the singer formerly known as Cat
Stevens, whose Islamic beliefs have landed him in trouble
with the American authorities.

As folk musician Cat Stevens he had a string of hits in the
1960s and 1970s, including such contemporary classics as
Moon Shadow, Peace Train and Morning Has Broken.

But since his conversion to Islam in 1977, the artist now
known as Yusuf Islam has taken a different path.

Born Steven Demetre Georgiou in July 1947, Stevens was the
son of a Swedish mother and a Greek Cypriot father.

The youngest of three siblings, he grew up living above his
parents' restaurant in London's West End.

A sensitive and introverted child, he was raised in the
Greek Orthodox faith but was sent to a Roman Catholic school.

He became interested in rock music in his teens while
attending Hammersmith College and began performing in 1965
under the name Steve Adams.

Signed to Decca Records under the name Cat Stevens, he had
his first hit at the age of 18 with I Love My Dog.

Hospital

His second single, Matthew And Son, nearly topped the UK
chart, while his third, I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun, reached the
top 10.

But his career was put on hold in 1968 when he contracted
tuberculosis. The singer spent three months in hospital and
another year recuperating.

His comeback single, Where Are You, was a failure, leading
him to change record labels and prompting disillusionment
with the music business.

Writing more personal and introspective material, he became
a star in the US with his self-penned song Wild World,
initially recorded by Jimmy Cliff.

His success grew when he contributed several songs to the
1972 film Harold and Maude, a mordant black comedy that
became a cult hit.

Stevens had eight consecutive gold albums and 10 hit singles
in the UK, with another 14 in the USA.

But the strain of being a pop star began to tell, and
Stevens would eventually abandon his music career in the
late 1970s.

Controversy

Embracing Islam, he changed his name to Yusuf Islam and
entered into an arranged marriage that bore him five children.

Becoming a teacher and an advocate for his religion, he
founded a Muslim school in London in 1983 and is now an
active member of the British Islamic community.

However, his dramatic change of lifestyle has not been
without controversy.

In the late 1980s he shocked many of his former fans by
supporting the fatwa ordered by the Ayatollah Khomeini
against Salman Rushdie, which led to him being put under a
death sentence by the Iranian government.

And in 2000 he was deported from Israel over allegations
that he backed the militant Islamic group Hamas.

The former folk singer claims he has never given money to
charities that support terrorism, though that has not
prevented his name from appearing on an FBI watch list.

It is this that resulted in this week's mid-air alert and
the singer being denied entry into the US "on national
security grounds".

On his website, though, the former singer says he has
"consistently denounced the acts of terrorists as being
directly contradictory to the peaceful teachings of Islam".

Last year he released a new version of Peace Train - his
first English language recording since 1978 - to express his
opposition to the war in Iraq.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/music/3679808.stm

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