Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie

On 21 February 1989, Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University) in London about his conversion to Islam and was asked about the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's execution. He replied, "He must be killed. The Qur'an makes it clear – if someone defames the prophet, then he must die."[4]

Newspapers quickly denounced what was seen as Yusuf Islam's support for the killing of Rushdie and the next day, he released a statement saying that he was not personally encouraging anybody to be a vigilante,[2] and that he was only stating that blasphemy is a capital offence according to the Qur'an.

Two months later, Islam appeared on an Australian television programme, ABC's Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals,[5] an occasional broadcast featuring a panel of notable guests to explore a hypothetical situation with moral, ethical and/or political dilemmas. In the episode "A Satanic Scenario", Islam had an exchange about the issue with the moderator and Queens Counsel Geoffrey Robertson.[6][7] Islam would later clarify the exchanges as "stupid and offensive jokes" made "in bad taste", but "part of a well-known British national trait ... dry humour on my part."[1]

Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act – perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.

The New York Times also reports this statement from the programme: [If Rushdie turned up at my doorstep looking for help] I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is.[8]

Later Islam stated the following about his above mentioned comments:[1]

I foolishly made light of certain provocative questions. When asked what I'd do if Salman Rushdie entered a restaurant in which I was eating, I said, "I would probably call up Ayatollah Khomeini"; and, rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author, I jokingly said I would have preferred that it'd be the “real thing”.

The content of the broadcast was reported in The New York Times on 23 May 1989,[8] a week before the show's intended broadcast. He and other Muslim participants "objected to cuts" that "omitted the Muslim justification for punishment of blasphemy."[8]

According to Islam, his last comments on the innocence of Rushdie were not a joke:

Providentially, they kept in one important response to a final question posed directly to me by Geoffrey Robertson QC. At the end of the debate he asked me to imagine if Salman Rushdie was taken to court in Britain and the Jury found him 'not guilty' of any crime – blasphemy or otherwise – and dismissed the case, what I would do. I clearly stated that I would have to accept the decision and fully abide by the law! And that was no joke.[1]

In a 2000 Rolling Stone magazine interview:

I'm very sad that this seems to be the No. 1 question people want to discuss. I had nothing to do with the issue other than what the media created. I was innocently drawn into the whole controversy. So, after many years, I'm glad at least now that I have been given the opportunity to explain to the public and fans my side of the story in my own words. At a lecture, back in 1989, I was asked a question about blasphemy according to Islamic Law, I simply repeated the legal view according to my limited knowledge of the Scriptural texts, based directly on historical commentaries of the Qur'an. The next day the newspaper headlines read, "Cat Says, Kill Rushdie." I was abhorred, but what could I do? I was a new Muslim. If you ask a Bible student to quote the legal punishment of a person who commits blasphemy in the Bible, he would be dishonest if he didn't mention Leviticus 24:16.[3]

In October 2020, Islam appeared on the BBC's Desert Island Discs and said:

I was certainly not prepared or equipped to deal with shark-toothed journalists and the whole way in which the media spins stories. I was cleverly framed, I would say, by certain questions, where I couldn’t for instance rewrite the 10 Commandments. You can’t expect me to do that. At the same time I never actually ever supported the fatwa. I even wrote a whole press statement which, very early on, which the press ignored – completely ignored. They went for the one which was written by the journalist who originally wrote the story. And so I had to live through that.[9]

On his personal spiritual website he wrote:

I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini—and still don’t. The book itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.

When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that – like both the Torah and the Gospel – the Qur'an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you're looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur'anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole...[10]