My father - a deeply pious man and member of a pietist, proselytizing movement called Tabligh e Jamaat - would spend Sundays transcribing Yusuf’s lyrics and duplicating his songs on cassettes with our ersatz tape recorder from RadioShack. In Yusuf Islam, I discovered Islam’s soul in a glitteringly similar way to how many discovered music’s very soul in Cat Stevens. In “Tala Al Badru Alayna,” we merrily heard and were embracingly taught the joy that the newly converted 7 th-century Muslims felt when Prophet Muhammad entered his soon-to-be haven and refuge : Medina in present-day Saudi Arabia. His voice rang soberly, joyously and cheerfully in our somewhat quaint townhouse, which would be filled with his melodious vocals and attendant lyricism after our daily prayer and throughout the long nights of Ramadan. But rather the Muslim hippie: the bearded, devotional garbed one who sang about Arabic letters and core Islamic motifs, the “A is for Allah” kind. Not the “The Wind” hippie with the quintessential 1970s flair for which he was acclaimed and fawned over.
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