Cat Stevens Site Worth Seeing

          Cat Stevens has produced a long list of musical hits through his years of playing music and producing albums.  Some of my favorite hits include “Wild World” and “Peace Train” which are timeless classics.  But all this time that I have been enjoying his music, never once did I wonder what his religion was or even if Cat Stevens was his true name.  That was until I was directed to his website for further review.

            Once visiting the site catstevens.com, the first thing you see is a Muslim looking gentleman sipping on some sort of drink with a guitar in the background.  As I explored in greater detail, I found out that the gentleman on the previous picture was actually Cat Stevens himself.  The first part of the website that I was most interested in was the music section.  This seemed to be a very user friendly part of the website as it opened up with a catchy melody playing in the background.  The page was set up as a cartoon picture with objects leading you to different sections of the website.  I immediately clicked on Cat Stevens’ picture leading me to his biography.  After reading Cat’s biography, I found out that his real name was Yusuf Islam and that Cat Stevens was actually his performing name.  Yusuf had just come out with a new album titled “An Other Cup,” his first recordings since 1978.  After being miraculously saved while swimming in the ocean, Yusuf turned to a life of serving God.  Since then he has been a part of numerous charities and has even recently received the European Man of Peace award.  Truly a different lifestyle than you see from a normal music legend.

            Another part of the website that caught my attention was the audio section.  It was hear that you could listen to all of the timeless classics that Yusuf has produced throughout his life.  Some songs I was able to recognize right off the bat but I did enjoy listening to other songs that I had really never heard before.  I was also able to see a short story about the life of Yusuf in the video section of the website that was also very informative.  The thing that impressed me the most about the website was the Give section.  Clicking on the word Give leads you to the site www.smallkindness.org.  It was here that I found out that Yusuf Islam was the chairman of this charitable site.  “Small Kindness is a charity with a slight difference, it very hardly advertises and, like its name, it wants to keep things small and personal.”  It motto seems like Yusuf Islam himself.  Very unattached from society, not letting the outside influences in the music world affect his path of serving God.  In my eyes all of this new knowledge of Cat Stevens makes him seem like a greater artist than I ever thought he was.  He is a person that deserves great respect for all of his musical talents as well as his kind and giving heart.