religions are entirely what their followers make of them
Is that like when Khadijah and her grifter, Hebrew Gospel-quoting, cousin wrote the Koran?
"Islam did not rise except through Ali's sword and Khadijah's wealth,"
Hmm.
Posted on 10/17/2017 9:47:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The imminent release of “Trouble No More” -- the latest installment of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series; this one covers his controversial 1979-81 “Christian period” -- recalls the long-gone age of high-profile rock star conversions.
Dylan became a Christian, George Harrison dived into Krishna consciousness, and Cat Stevens embraced Islam, and each demonstrated, yet again, that Leftist dogma is false. The content of one’s religious beliefs does matter, and influences those who take their religions seriously.
Both Harrison and Dylan were widely criticized for their sanctimony. Reviewing Harrison’s 1973 album “Living in the Material World” in New Musical Express, Tony Tyler called the record “so damn holy I could scream.” In their book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Tyler and his co-author Roy Carr say of Harrison:
[I]t’s difficult to see why he travelled all the way to India to import a God who, by the sound of him (“The Lord Loves the One [That] Loves the Lord”) is as intractable and selfish as the petulant Jehovah of Victorian Sunday schools.
Reviewing Harrison’s “Extra Texture” album in Rolling Stone in 1975, Dave Marsh criticized the album’s “vague cant and astral pomposity,” and concluded:
Finally, we are faced with the fact that Harrison’s records are nothing so much as boring. They drone, and while chants and mantras may be paths to glory in other realms, in pop music they are only routes to tedium.
Harrison’s first wife Pattie may have agreed: she cited as one of the reasons for the breakup of their marriage his “obsessiveness” with his devotional practices.
Born-again Bob Dylan was similarly received. Performing in San Francisco on November 1, 1979, his first concert after his conversion, Dylan played only his new, Christian-themed songs. Reviewing the concert for Rolling Stone, Robert Palmer opined that “the unrelenting sermonizing grew tedious.” Reviewing Dylan’s 1980 album “Saved” for Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder called him “a perfect caricature of a Bible-thumping convert.”
The following year, reviewing Dylan’s subsequent album, “Shot of Love,” also for Rolling Stone, Paul Nelson quoted a lyric from one of the songs, “Trouble”:
"Nightclubs of the brokenhearted / Stadiums of the damned," Dylan intones, and you wonder if these places could possibly be any worse than being trapped in a room with this record.
After Cat Stevens converted to Islam and started calling himself Yusuf Islam, there were no scathing reviews from Rolling Stone, because there was no music. Stevens/Islam quit the music business, as Islam forbids music except for nasheeds, songs praising Allah that are usually performed a cappella.
Islamic tradition records:
[T]he Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance. (Hadith Qudsi 19:5)
Muhammad is also depicted as saying:
Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance. (Reliance of the Traveller r40.0).
Islamic apologists in the West like to claim that only “Islamophobes” think Islam forbids music, but Cat Stevens certainly believed it did. Nothing was heard from him for decades. Then he began to resurface. Now he is a respected and venerated elder star, calling himself “Yusuf” without the “Islam” and singing pop music again. But as recently as 2010, there was published on YouTube a nasheed in which the author of “Peace Train” sang:
I’m praying to Allah to give us victory over the kuffar (unbelievers).
This bellicose prayer was in line with Yusuf Islam’s earlier post-conversion behavior. In 1989, he enthusiastically endorsed the Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa against Salman Rushdie for insulting Islam. In a BBC panel discussion, he said that, rather than burning Rushdie in effigy:
I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.
He further explained that if he were in an Islamic state and was ordered by the relevant authority to kill Rushdie, he would do so.
In 2004, Yusuf Islam was barred from entering the United States because of suspicions that he had been financing jihad terrorism. He acknowledged that some of his money may have gone to jihadis, but he claimed to have given money to them unwittingly.
Yusuf Islam has worked hard to soften his image, as George Harrison and Bob Dylan also did after the enthusiasm of their conversions wore off. But Harrison and Dylan had only to fight against perceptions that they were preachy and self-righteous. The former Cat Stevens had to try to demonstrate he was not a supporter of jihad terrorism and mass murder.
After their conversions, George Harrison and Bob Dylan became, at least in the eyes of some, annoying; Cat Stevens, by contrast, became dangerous. Harrison and Dylan never called for or approved of violence against anyone. Yusuf Islam did.
This is because of the content of the religions they each embraced.
Cat Stevens took up a religion that exhorted him to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 9:5) and “strike the necks” of the unbelievers (47:4). Given that the Islamic religion mandates death for blasphemers, it is not in the least surprising that Yusuf Islam endorsed the death fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Yusuf Islam became an endorser of brutality and murder because his new religion endorsed brutality and murder.
The Leftist media darling and renowned pseudo-intellectual “scholar of religions” Reza Aslan has claimed that religions are entirely what their followers make of them:
If you’re a violent, war-mongering person, you can find justification in any scripture. If you’re a peaceful, pluralistic person, you can find justification for your views in the exact same scriptures.
The conversions of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, and Cat Stevens show that Aslan is, as always, wrong.
Reza Aslan, not that Aslan. That Aslan would know which religion sons of Adam and daughters of Eve were to embrace.
The portrayal of Harrison’s impact underemphasizes the fact that he stimulated a strong interest in Indian spirituality in the West among baby boomers.
religions are entirely what their followers make of them
Is that like when Khadijah and her grifter, Hebrew Gospel-quoting, cousin wrote the Koran?
"Islam did not rise except through Ali's sword and Khadijah's wealth,"
"In Brief: Special thanks to Richie Havens, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Alfred Ford, George Harrison and John Fahey for their contributions to ISKCON Projects:"
http://www.prabhupada.de/gemeinde/Michael-Cassidy.htm
Golden Avatar - Swetadip (Vinyl, 1976)
Got that album as a "gift" from a guy who was at the entrance of the Denver Zoo back circa 1977. He got rather excited when I thanked him for his "gift" without imparting a "donation" and went on my way.
Shouldn’t “Reza Aslan” be Reza Tash?
They are not the same.
Harrison came back to Catholicism.
Aslan is Turkish for Lion. It was Turkish for Lion before C.S. Lewis.
I never heard this.
Isaac Hayes converted to Scientology... that didn’t work out to well for him either I think.
I never heard that George dropped Krishna. Would love that to be true.
Isaac Hayes sat on his ass and collected a paycheck while South Park mocked Christians, Mormons, and just about every other religion. But when they went after Scientology, Hayes quit the show.
Cat Stevens later said he was joking about killing Rushdie because he was annoyed by the question.
Yeah...right
Still, after Harrison was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and nearly murdered in his home by a deranged, knife-wielding intruder in 1999, he confessed to his wife Olivia that he still wasn't where he wanted to be spiritually. "I better start letting go of this life," she recalls George telling her. "I better start doing what I've been practicing to do my whole life so that I can leave my body the way I want to."
When Harrison lost his battle with cancer on November 29, 2001, Olivia says "there was a profound experience that happened when he left his body. It was visible. Let's just say that you wouldn't need to light the room if you were trying to film it. He just lit the room." Admirable faith
How Harrison lived out his spirituality is admirable on many levels. As a Christian, I don't share his beliefs and conclusions, but I can learn much from how he dispensed with the trappings of our earthly existence (figuratively at least; he left 100 million British pounds—or about $163 million US—to his heirs), how passionately he pursued his faith, and especially how he faced death.
It was in a book called “The Beatles” or something. So it may not have been true. I tried to find it but I think it is out on loan.
I read it in a book on the Beatles, but it may not have been true. You never know. I think the book is out on loan.
Bob Dylan’s conversion didn’t quite last. He seems to hover between Judaism, Christianity and agnosticism. Different groups want to claim him, but only he knows for sure what he believes (and he may not be all that sure himself).
Never heard that, but Dylan eventually did resign himself to being Jewish.
Oh okay, not saying it isn’t true though, just that I cannot find anything to support that claim. I did find one that said none of the Beatles left their Catholicism completely, but it didn’t really look credible to me after reading it somewhat.
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