On the Road to Find Out

Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) and I both had a birthday this month. And allow me to sound like a teenage fan-girl for a moment and say that I’ve always felt we were kindred spirits in a way … or at least that his spirit was unique in its ability to sing to my own. We have a number of similarities:

Like me, his life and art are defined by spiritual searching and by a sense of restless out-of-placeness. His music, like my writing and art, reflects a longing for meaning, understanding, and God. Astrology, numerology, Buddhism, Eastern Orthodoxy, vague new-agism, and even an interest in aliens … all these were signposts on his way, and they have been on my own as well. In fact, one of Cat’s oddest fixations was on the Romanov family: Maybe Your Right, from the ‘Mono Bon Jakon’ album, was part of an unfinished musical he wrote about the royal family. I fell in love with the Romanov’s when I was eleven years old, and even now have an icon of the royal family on my wall. Finally, by all accounts Cat Stevens, despite his deep sense of spirit, could be cranky, difficult and perfectionistic. Early on, at least, he chain smoked and over-drank. He was a control freak. For those that know me, I needn’t say more.

And then he found Islam in 1977/78.                                                                  

When I discovered this in my late teens I respected Cat so much that I bought a copy of the Koran and read it, twice. I even memorized The Opening, and dabbled with Islamic style of prayer. But, unlike Cat, I didn’t find what I was looking for in Islam.

In fact, while I defended Islam for many years because of my deep respect for Cat, I eventually decided that it was the most backwards of all the major world religions. Of all of them it seemed–by nature of its theology and history–the most apt to lend itself to violence. While Christians, for example, invented the concept of martyr as dying non-violently for the faith, The Prophet Muhammad reinvented it to entail killing and dying for the faith. More, and by way of simple litmus, I would only note that of all the major religious traditions Islam is the only one that seems incapable, as a norm, of coexisting with other faiths–any other faith. When was the last time you heard of  Hindu groups slaughtering worshipers in a synagog, or Jewish groups blowing up a Buddhist shrine, or even a group of Christian missionaries taking Muslim hostages and sawing off their heads.

This is not to say the majority of Muslims are violent monsters, or that Islam is incapable of being a peaceful religion, or that other religions don’t produce their fair share of the violent, backwards and cruel. I am merely recognizing a fact of history, and one that is rather easily explained when one examines and contrasts the theology/philosophies and worldviews of the dominant religions. Islam just happens to be the only one that, at its theological core, calls for a political-religious, universal, worldly kingdom. This is not the case with Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, or Hinduism. But with that said …

Back to Cat, Yusuf, and what he represents to me and what I think he represents for Islam. He is a reminder of what I once knew and started to forget precisely because of those ideas about Islam that I mentioned above. Namely, that while it may be easier in Islam to find justifications for backwardness and brutality, it does not follow from this that one must find that or that one cannot find a great deal of Good. In all things, evolution. In all things, progress. History unfolds, our goodness stumbles forward, our stubborn ugliness intent on tripping us up. As human beings we struggle to see God through a foggy mirror; to describe His contours and shape. Sometimes we see more and sometime less, both individually, and collectively. Islam is no exception. But every day, if we keep looking, the image becomes clearer and one day we shall see the All of it.

We must realize that the fog on the mirror is illusion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism). That behind the mirror is One God (Judaism, Islam, Christianity). That, in a way, the God looking back at us is a reflection of our Self (Hinduism, Buddhism). And that even if we choose blindness, choose to only see the fog, we shall nevertheless be redeemed by grace because our very flesh has been made holy by God incarnate (Christianity). And one day, we will all see clearly, the fog vanished: Heaven and Earth married (Christianity). Mankind in submission to the truth of Divine Peace (Islam).