| 22 Cat Stevens
Unplugged Like
me, Cat Stevens was also to stop singing those wild songs. He moreover evolved into an
Islamic Da’wah preacher, Yusof Islam.
These days, I would occasionally catch
Yusof Islam on Saudi TV singing some children’s lilting rhymes whose lyrics I could
not quite memorize, but something that goes like this: A is for Allah, nothing but Allah.
B is for the beginning of Bismillah … J is for Jannah, garden of paradise, D is for
Din Al Islam.... Or, Yusof would be expounding on TV interviews about women’s high
position or about human rights, which, if you read the Qur’an very carefully, are all
values being espoused in Islam with the highest ideals that any civilization can muster. I
also sometimes go to www.catstevens.com to listen to some of Yusuf’s songs.
I can imagine, he would also be reading to
his children passages of the Qur’an such as this:
When angels take
The souls of those
Who die in sin
Against their souls,
They say: "In what plight
Were ye?" They reply:
"Weak and oppressed
Were we in the earth."
They say: "Was not
The earth of God
Spacious enough for you
To move yourselves away
From evil?"
[Surah Nisaa : 97]
Yusof Islam organized and painstakingly
fought for a modern Islamiya School which was to become the first Islamic school to be
officially aided by the UK government, a school that, Yusof claims, is now bringing youths
back from the brink and despondency of moonshadows, away from the dregs of a wild world,
transforming them into productive members of society.
This is the solution that I would want to
impose on Mindanao.
Of course, whenever I get too earnest like
this, Doc Bahjin and Jun Credo would tease me by saying, "Hear, hear! And those who
refuse to see things your way, line them all up on the edges of the pier and blast them
out of their pants, mga hinayupak na yan!"
In the meantime, in the light of the good
ambassador’s disclaimer, the question of who hurled those February fireballs at Jolo
remains shrouded in mystery, in the same league as the car-smashing incidents at the
Philippine schools in Jeddah.
|
