Flight of the Muslim

It was September of 2004. A man with graying beard, dawning a long robe in very neutral coloring and a twenty-one year old daughter were boarding a plane bound for America. After going through security, he settled into his seat, preparing for his visit with a woman who called herself Dolly Parton. With his fantastic background in music and his recent religious switch, he was ready to take on yet another step with his life, but all that would change abruptly. After crossing the Atlantic, the plane made an unexpected stop at Maine’s Bangor International Airport. Was this just a pit stop? This man with the beard did not pay attention to any reasoning for the stop. He sat back and relaxed, waiting to continue on his journey.

When the plane parked, a few rather stern looking guards walked back toward the bearded man. Concern soon made its presence when the guards removed the man and his daughter from the plane with haste. Confusion set in when he was taken to a room with FBI agents. They had a few serious questions for the bearded man. What about his meeting with Dolly? He was going to be late, and he was supposed to be in Nashville soon.

The questioning began: Why do you think your name is on the Border Protection List? What are your connections with Muslim terrorist groups? After all
the questioning, he was told he was refused entry into the country, based on the fact that he was on a terrorist watch list. The next day, the bearded man and his daughter were sent back to London without much of an explanation for what had happened in Maine. The bearded man did, however, have a small connection with a terrorist group. He was, in fact, accused of supporting a fundamentalist terrorist group. Whether that is actually true or not was in question, but it was enough to ban him from Israel. Whatever the motives may have been, he is officially not allowed into the United States because he is on the “no-fly” list.

In contrast, the bearded Muslim man also has connections to charities and today is called a humanitarian. He started several Muslim schools in London without the funding of the British Government. At the peak of his musical career, he gave up music and sold all of his material possessions, and ended up giving up much of his earnings to children’s charities in third-world countries. His work in countries such as Bosnia, Iran, the Sudan, Palestine, and even Indonesia has been considered nothing short of saintly. His songwriting continues to this day. He mainly writes music for children and the Muslim faith. It seems that this harmless man was misunderstood. Although his past has been invaded by controversy, the bearded man, who had once captured the entire world with his voice, and his music has done everything to promote peace, love, and kindness amongst all nations. His support for any sort of terrorist group, fact or fiction, does not persist. The bearded man in a long neutral colored robe, is Yusuf Islam, the man who once was a folk artist with top performers like Jimi Hendrix. But the rest world may know him by his stage name, Cat Stevens.