Unanswered Question

I was very disappointed by the story about Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) (“A New Morning Has Broken,” by Phil Sutcliffe, May 21).

Now that his old records are being re-released, Islam is ready to hawk his life story to the press like any other singer making a comeback, but he dodges the one question that must be answered. In 1989, Islam advocated the murder of another artist, Salman Rushdie, to satisfy his own religious intolerance. Either he still stands by that position, or he must clearly repudiate it. (We’re told that the controversy “wounded” him, and any discussion of it today makes him “terribly uncomfortable”--as if Islam were the victim!)

Because one must assume that some portion of Islam’s profits from the Cat Stevens re-releases will be donated by the artist to help propagate precisely the same kind of fundamentalist religious intolerance that he has espoused in the past, the question is not an idle one to anyone contemplating a CD purchase.

STEVEN SAYLOR

Berkeley