Cat Stevens' Comments About Salman Rushdie
Following Ayatollah Khomeini's February 14, 1989 death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, convert to Islam and recording artist Yusuf Islam, previously known as Cat Stevens, made statements that were interpreted as endorsing the killing of Rushdie. This generated a furor among a number of celebrities and free-speech activists in the West who spoke out about his comments on radio stations and newspaper editorials.
In response, Yusuf Islam said that some of his comments were "stupid and offensive jokes" made in "bad taste," while others were merely giving his interpretation of Islamic law but not advocating any action. Yusuf Islam also said that later in the same program he non-jokingly promised to accept the judgment of a British court if it found Rushdie innocent of any crime, blasphemy or otherwise.
Read more about Cat Stevens' Comments About Salman Rushdie: Criticism and Backlash, Alleged Resemblance To Character in The Novel
Famous quotes containing the words salman rushdie, cat, comments and/or rushdie:
“Our lives teach us who we are.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)
“As I walked on the glacis I heard the sound of a bagpipe from the soldiers’ dwellings in the rock, and was further soothed and affected by the sight of a soldier’s cat walking up a cleated plank in a high loophole designed for mus-catry, as serene as Wisdom herself, and with a gracefully waving motion of her tail, as if her ways were ways of pleasantness and all her paths were peace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse, mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyse the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)