Yusuf Cat Stevens Advocates For Peace In Israel With ‘Sons Of Abraham’ Essay

Yusuf / Cat Stevens issued an essay addressing the “struggle for land and nationhood in the Palestine/Israel region.” His “Sons Of Abraham” essay provides context to “tragic” and “unnecessary” conflict and strives to highlight similarities between Judaism and Islam in an effort to bring peace.

Born Steven Demetre Georgiou, the singer-songwriter is best known as Cat Stevens. In the 1970s while swimming in the ocean near Malibu, California, Stevens got caught up in a riptide and feared for his life, as he related in an interview in the 1990s.

“I felt as if I had no power,” he said. “After I was swimming for about half an hour, I couldn’t get back to shore. At that point, quite simply, there was no one to help me. As they say, you’ll never find an atheist on a sinking ship. I called out. I said, ‘Oh God, if you save me, I’ll work for you.’ And at that moment a wave, however big it was, came from behind me and pushed me forward and suddenly I had all the energy I needed. I was back on land and safe.”

While he had explored Buddhism and other spiritual paths, Stevens had yet to find something that spoke to him until his brother David, a convert to Judaism, returned from a trip to Jerusalem. Knowing his brother’s spiritual search, David brought Cat a translated copy of the Qur’an, which the singer-songwriter said was “a guidance that would explain everything to me — who I was; what was the purpose of life; what was the reality and what would be the reality; and where I came from — I realized that this was the true religion.” Cat Stevens converted to Islam in 1977 and took the name Yusuf Islam.

Yusuf’s spiritual quest, his ties to both Islam and Judaism as well as his longtime advocacy for peace are present in his “The Sons Of Abraham” statement, which can be viewed in the video below: