Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)

Cat Stevens

The son of a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother who ran a restaurant in London's Marylebone, he had his first success in 1967 with the album Matthew and Son. After a long convalescence from tuberculosis at the end of the 1960s, he released Tea for the Tillerman (1970), Teaser and the Firecat (1971) and Catch Bull at Four (1972), with songs such as "Wild World", "Father and Son", "Moonshadow", "Morning Has Broken" and "Peace Train". His records have sold in the tens of millions.

Conversion and withdrawal

In the mid-1970s, after nearly drowning off Malibu, California, he was given a copy of the Quran by his brother David. He embraced Islam in December 1977 at the Regent's Park Mosque in London, took the name Yusuf Islam and gave up his pop career in 1979, auctioning his guitars for charity.

In October 1983 he founded Islamia Primary School in Queen's Park, London, which in 1998 became the first Muslim school in Britain to receive state funding. He also set up the charity Small Kindness, which supports orphans and people in need in the Balkans, Iraq and Africa. In 1989 his remarks during the Salman Rushdie affair caused a major controversy; he later said he had never supported the fatwa.

Devotional recordings and return to music

Through his label Jamal Records and his company Mountain of Light, he released religious works including The Life of the Last Prophet (1995), the children's album A Is for Allah (2000) and I Look, I See (2003). The compilation Footsteps in the Light (2006) gathers his Islamic recordings from the 1980s to 2004: nasheeds such as "Tala'al Badru 'Alayna" and "Salli Ala Muhammad", spoken-word pieces and the call to prayer.

He returned to mainstream music with An Other Cup (2006), his first pop album since 1978, followed by Roadsinger (2009), Tell 'Em I'm Gone (2014), The Laughing Apple (2017), released as Yusuf / Cat Stevens, and King of a Land (2023). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.