My Peace City | nonviolence & social change

This was originally written on Sept.29, 2004

It’s fortunate we don’t decide world issues in a poker game. With the recent proclivity in this administration for throwing away aces, we’d surely be left with a losing hand if this were a game of Five Card Draw. The detention on September 22nd, of Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, and his subsequent forced return to Britain, provides the perfect microcosmic metaphor for the macrocosmic mistakes of the Bush Administration: wrong person at the wrong time for the wrong reason. If ever we doubted the Bush administration’s talent for making things worse in classic Inspector Clouseau / Pink Panther fashion, we need to doubt no more. The detention of Yusuf Islam confirmed it.

In one way, I was delighted to hear Cat Steven’s name in the news after all these years. I remember having been puzzled and even mildly distressed in the late 70′s when it was announced that he converted to Islam and would end his singing career. Along with millions of other fans in the world, I had played the vinyl 33 rpm albums, “Tea for the Tillerman” and “Teaser and Firecat” over and over on a turntable probably purchased at Sears. I’d be careful to use the special record-cleaning solution and a velvet “brush” before I put these two records back in their jackets because these were among my favorites. It seemed as if the songs of those albums washed away the burden of the war we had just exited. Thankfully, my husband had come home safely from Viet Nam in 1971 on Nixon’s “early out’s” which were precipitated by the protests against the war. For those who had seen too much in that euphemistically described “conflict” and for those who waited for them back home, the songs on Cat Steven’s albums held poignant meaning. The words of “Peace Train” gave hope there would be no more Viet Nams:

“‘Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train, take this country, come take me home again.”

Even well after the war in 1976, I would play “Peace Train” for our two-year-old daughter, Bethany. She was a curly headed little miracle who might not have been dancing in front of the stereo had her father never returned from Quang Tri or had he been exposed to Agent Orange. I wanted the words of the song to fill her psyche so when she grew up she could be part of those who consider themselves among the peacemakers of the world – those who dare to think outside of the world’s rigid old boy’s paradigm of embracing military solutions to solve the psychotic terrors that seem to resurface in the world generation after generation.
But, whether you were part of the crowd listening to “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens during that time or playing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles; whether you were among those who had opposed the Viet Nam War, or supported it; or whether you simply didn’t know what to think about it, it was a good bet that you knew most of the words to Cat Steven’s other popular song, “Morning Has Broken.” No doubt on a Sunday morning, you were singing along with some young tenor in a tan corduroy blazer who was leading your congregation through all the verses of this profound hymn of praise by poet and lyricist Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). Few were left untouched by the spirituality of Cat Steven’s recording of this hymn, and it would be safe to say that without recording, the hymn would never have been immortalized as it has been:
“Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.”

I remember standing with my husband in our pew at Mass on Sunday mornings, our little girl between us. We’d each take her hand as we sang “Morning Has Broken,” as if the profound awe and respect for the universe that we felt from the music would pass through us to her. I remember, too, trying hard not to cry.
But apparently the Homeland Security officials appointed to oversee the list of possible terrorists suspects in September, had never personally experienced the simplistic profundity of “Peace Train” or “Morning Has Broken.” That’s understandable. What is surprising, however, is that no one responsible for the list apparently had taken time to read Yusuf Islam’s condemnation of the attack on 9/11:

“I wish to express my heartfelt horror at the indiscriminate terrorist attacks committed against innocent people of the United States…No right-thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action… The Quran equates the murder of one innocentperson with the murder of the whole of humanity.”

And apparently President Bush or the CIA knew his works of social justice in the world supporting children left orphaned in Kosova; initiating home building projects in Turkey following the earthquakes; donating part of the box set royalties to The 9/11 Fund.Perhaps Yusuf Islam’s comments on the slaughter of innocent children in the school in Beslan in Russia’s North Ossetia republic on September 1, 2004 were not plain enough for those in the administration to understand:

“There is no vocabulary fit to describe the gruesome cruelty of this event; watching helplessly as hundreds of children were mercilessly utilized as negotiating tokens in a political game, which they had absolutely nothing to do with, makes us ponder what kind of inhumane mentality the perpetrators had.”

As John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “…of all the words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’ There are lots of “might have beens” in the Bush Administration, lots of illogical strategies. If Bush were a chess player, his strategy for entering the war in Iraq by moving his Queen unilaterally without allied protection would seem inane. If Bush were playing poker, throwing away the ace of humility at his UN address and hanging tightly onto the “3″ of arrogance would seem foolhardy. Only the most cynical of us, however, would believe that the loveable face and the childlike shrugs of the man leading our country are those of a man evil intentioned. But then again, the character of Inspector Clouseau was never evil intentioned either.

Our strategy in responding to the atrocities of 9/11 by going into Iraq has put the entire world at risk, and the bravado of a Clouseau-like character serves to fool only the unthinking. The train Bush chose to engineer is a military convoy not a train that has any resemblance of a peace train. However, all the military ordinance deployed, all the troops mustered to Iraq,all the bombs dropped by all the B 52 bombers on all the villages and towns in all the countries throughout the world where suspected terrorists reside, will not make us secure. It is challenging the mindset of the “inhumane mentality” as Yusuf Islam so succinctly defines it, that is the strongest hope we have of making our nation and the world safe. Only a few have had the influence to do that. Yusuf Islam is one. He is a devout Muslim whose religious convictions make him credible to the East and whose message of non-violence makes him invaluable to the West. He has the potential of being a conduit who can influence change. But Bush Administration in returning Yusuf Islam to London tripped over the cord of that conduit in clumsy fashion as it has tripped so many times before. We can only hope that the affable Clouseau-like character of George Bush is replaced by a more thoughtful player who doesn’t lumber into the china shop while the rest of the world scrambles behind him trying to catch the invaluable vase before it drops to the floor.

by Billie Pagliolo