Bruce Bawer has an article in the New York Sun on ASCAP’s Songwriter of the Year, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf “Death to Salman Rushdie” Islam: Sending a Grim Message. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Perhaps the barring of Yusuf from America and his expulsion from Israel were based on misunderstandings; perhaps he was misquoted on Mr. Rushdie, and perhaps the Jawa Report is mistaken. But Yusuf’s own statements on his own Web site are not so easily dismissed. On that Web site he claims that he “never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini,” even though he feels that Mr. Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” “destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.” But then he adds the following: “When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that — like both the Torah and the Gospel — the Qur’an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offense. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you’re looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur’anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole.” What does this mean? It means this: Yusuf is not against the idea of Mr. Rushdie being executed for writing a book. He is simply acknowledging that in Britain and other Western countries, the proper Islamic punishments do not apply. Yet.

What about women’s rights — about burkas and such? Yusuf writes on his Web site that his wife and four daughters all wear clothes “which modestly cover their God-given beauty.” He insists that “a woman’s beauty and form” should not be viewed by “males who are not closely related.” This view places him squarely in the mainstream of patriarchal Islamism, for whose adherents the covering of women is central to the theological principle that a family’s honor is founded in its women’s “modesty.”

And what about free speech? Yusuf supports an Islam that “wisely prohibits the vilification of what people hold sacred, in order that people do not vilify or mock God the Almighty.” In other words, he champions the same kind of Shariah-based censorship that obtains in Saudi Arabia and Iran and that was a way of life in Taliban-run Afghanistan. This is, in short, a man who opposes freedom of speech and women’s equality — a man who would have cheered the execution of Salman Rushdie. The decision to invite him to perform at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert — which is supposed to be a celebration of civilization’s highest values — sends a grim message about the values the Norwegian Nobel Committee exalts above all others.

For the new album, Atlantic Records was canny enough to remove the word “Islam” from his name; he’s simply Yusuf. And you’ll have to read pretty far down into the reviews to find anyone who knows—or cares—about his radical views.