Cat's Pause

"Cat Stevens" got caught in the blowback of the mass media's strained avoidance of the word "terrorist." The Philadelphia Inquirer headling the other day about his deportation referred to him as an "Islamic militant." Which probably was an accurate description, in the old sense of that phrase. But now, when I read it, I thought, "what, he's been chopping off heads, too?"

The trouble with a euphemism is that the harmless word you introduce in place of the too-dangerous one quickly acquires the baggage of the old word. It's a very temporary solution. The word "harlot" used to mean merely "vagabond," but since 16th century Bible translators started using it in place of the racier words like "strumpet" and "whore," it's come to mean essentially the same thing they did.

So was Yusuf Islam a legitimate entry on the no-entry list? The Old Media reporting has left that a nebulous issue. The Reuters story from Sept. 22 says:

A law enforcement official who asked not to be identified said the United States had information that Islam, who visited the United States in May, had donated money to the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Islam was denied entry to Israel in 2000 after the authorities there accused him of supporting Hamas. The former pop star denied the charges and said his charitable donations were for humanitarian causes.

So does that mean he said he donated to Hamas charities, or not non-Hamas charities? Can't anybody at Reuters be bothered to follow up on an obvious hole in a story?

Stephen Schwartz makes a case for the exclusion that's not built on the Hamas connection, but on more recent activities. But he manages to prove that the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens is a fundamentalist Muslim in the Wahhabist strain, and a fellow-traveler of Muslim clerics who say vile things. But if that's cause for exclusion, there goes the whole Saudi royal family.

Personally, I would have excluded him for his contributions to treacly limp-wristed '70s folk-pop.