Yusuf Islam, the retired maker of good music and former Cat Stevens, recently claimed “a little wave” helped push him to convert to Islam.
He was swimming off of Malibu beach in 1975, and became caught in the current.
“Suddenly I was petrified. I thought this might be it,” he said. “I said, ‘God, if you save me, I’ll work for you.’”
“And then a little wave, you know, came behind me,” he said. “It wasn’t very big. But it was that miraculous moment when suddenly the tide was going in my favor.”
Two years later he converted to Islam.
As a devoutly unreligious man, I found this explanation confusing. To which god did he pray?
Was it a) The Christian god of his upbringing or b) The Muslim god?
If the answer was “a”, then dude, you hosed the Christian god after he pulled your nuts out of a vice. Floods and pestilence are often the rewards for this type of behavior.
If the answer was “b” (which I find even stranger, since it seems to me that one of the points of having a god is being able to call upon him in a pinch, instead of consulting some divine rolodex for a new savior while the tide is pulling you to Guam), why did it take you two years to convert? Muslim god delivered the goods. You should have been calling for the murder of dissident writers by sunup.
