Still riding the peace train

NEW YORK -- Yusuf Islam is holding court in a Manhattan hotel suite. His handlers are hovering nearby. Yusuf (as he's known professionally) wears the full beard required of Muslim men and simple clothes in soft shades of white. He speaks of divine love and the path to heaven. He's also a pop star, ego very much intact. Yusuf presents a strange mix of savvy and serenity, as if he's straddling two worlds -- which he is, and quite eagerly.

At 58, more than a quarter-century after abandoning pop music, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens is back in the spotlight with a new album, a keen sense of purpose, and little apprehension about returning to the world of publicists, promotional tours, and secular songs.

"Not to be presumptuous, but it seems I was built for this job," Yusuf says. "I've been running a label since 1995. It's kind of below the radar for many people because this is a label designed for the Muslim community. But I've been very active in that field. As far as press is concerned? If you'd seen the chaos and hysteria when I entered Turkey for the first time, you would have thought it was Beatlemania all over again. This is very familiar."

Indeed. The lilting folk-pop on "An Other Cup," Yusuf's first collection of mainstream music since 1978, sounds comfortingly close to his early work. His warm voice has hardly aged. Despite a more explicit spiritual bent, the artist's sentiments remain essentially unchanged. And the timing of Yusuf's return to the spotlight, during a period of bitter discord between Islam and the West, is no coincidence. As a high-profile Muslim with a distinguished musical legacy and a global audience, Yusuf has set out not simply to straddle worlds but to build a bridge between them.

"The message that I carry isn't that far away from what I was saying before, but it just has so much more profound meaning today," says Yusuf. " 'Peace Train' says it all. Come take this country home. Why must we go on hating? Why can't we live in bliss? The perpetual view of man in conflict hasn't stopped, but neither have the people who want to make peace. I feel a responsibility to take steps."

During the last three decades, Yusuf has opened a chain of Muslim schools in London; founded Small Kindness , a UN-registered charity that helps orphans in war-torn countries; and appeared in recent years at benefit concerts for tsunami relief and AIDS awareness. He and his wife, Fawzia Ali, have raised five children. While in New York in December, Yusuf joined Kofi Annan and the prime ministers of Spain and Turkey for an event marking the Alliance of Civilizations initiative aimed at healing the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies. Earlier this month, he was awarded the Mediterranean Prize for Peace in Naples, Italy.

But Yusuf's humanitarian resume isn't unblemished. The public was outraged when he made comments in the late 1980s that seemed to support Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie; Yusuf has long denied this, claiming that he was simply stating the Koran's position. In 2000 Yusuf was denied entry into Israel for allegedly making donations to Hamas. Four years later, he was en route to the United States when his name came up on a no-fly list; the plane was diverted to Maine and Yusuf was forced to return to the United Kingdom. A media uproar ensued, and Yusuf successfully sued several British newspapers for libel.

"I've been misconstrued, misquoted, and misunderstood," says Yusuf, who responds on the new album with a cover of the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." "It was," he notes, "my wife's idea. She's very smart."

Atlantic Records president Craig Kallman, who flew to London last year when he heard that Yusuf was recording new songs and personally signed him to the label, says that much of the company's marketing plan for Yusuf in 2007 hinges on successfully reintroducing him to a skeptical public. "I think he's one of the most potent songwriters that's ever been around, but there's no question getting to the root of who he is and moving beyond the veneer of his name and his faith is critical," Kallman says.

Yusuf has traveled to New York for a three-day media blitz and a concert for an invited audience of press and industry insiders at Frederick P. Rose Hall , hosted by KCRW music director and "Morning Becomes Eclectic" host Nic Harcourt. Harcourt, a well-known indie-rock tastemaker, had been pursuing an interview with Yusuf for years.

"I don't connect with some of the spiritual stuff, but he sounds amazing," says Harcourt, who has posted a webcast of the Dec. 19 concert and conversation at KCRW.org. "And honestly the fact that he'd been so demonized intrigued me. I thought he should be given a forum."

At the show, his first US performance in 30 years, a slightly stiff but visibly moved Yusuf sings several new songs, among them "Maybe There's a World," which imagines "an open world/ borderless and wide/ where the people move from place to place and nobody's taking sides." He also sings "Peace Train," "Oh, Very Young," and "Father and Son," making for not a few misty-eyed rock critics. He tells Harcourt that "to be what you must, you have to give up what you are."

Yusuf is well versed in such transformations. Steven Georgiou, born in 1948 to a Greek father and Swedish mother and raised as a Catholic, became the pop singer Cat Stevens in 1966. Unfulfilled by the trappings of stardom, he spent years searching for a spiritual path. He investigated Buddhism, Taoism, and numerology, but nothing felt right until his brother gave him a copy of the Koran.

"That's where I discovered my answers," Yusuf says.

On Dec. 23, 1977, the musician converted to Islam, soon after changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and then -- as far as the general public was concerned -- disappeared. As far as Yusuf is concerned, "I got a life."

He supported his family with royalties from the Cat Stevens catalog, but it would be more than a quarter-century before Yusuf picked up a guitar again. He explains that while his faith's centuries-old debate about musical instruments doesn't explicitly prohibit them, he steered clear of them mainly "to stay out of trouble" with his religious community. He began recording devotional vocal music in 1995. But it turns out Yusuf's only son, Mohammed, had quietly, without his father's knowledge, become a Cat Stevens scholar. Then, two years ago, while vacationing with his family in Dubai, Mohammed -- who's now 21 and planning to release his own album this year -- brought a guitar into the house.

"It was strange, but a delight," Yusuf says of rediscovering his musical roots with his teenager. "I discovered a complete wavelength I can enjoy with my son, and I think that's pretty unique. The story I told in 'Father and Son' was quite opposite."

There are some in the Muslim community, he says, who oppose his return to secular music, who believe all music is inextricably linked to the music business and an attendant lifestyle they find objectionable. But Yusuf believes otherwise. He points to the Songs of Solomon, divine in origin, meant to enlighten and uplift. Human beings desire beauty, Yusuf says, and that hunger must be nourished. "We're not just animals. We have a higher purpose, and one of the aspects of art is to remind us of higher spheres of harmony."

That day in Dubai, Yusuf began to play again. It was, he says, "like the floodgates opened. I had no obligation to anybody except to enjoy what I did and come up with ideas and songs that would articulate how I felt. I was back to being an amateur. It was like starting again."

Except it's not. Atlantic Records would be thrilled if Yusuf hit the road in support of "An Other Cup," but aside from the recent New York event -- and despite a flood of offers including a headlining spot at the Glastonbury Festival -- Yusuf has no plans to tour. In fact, he's forgoing a trip he'd wanted to make to Los Angeles in order to return to London as soon as possible.

"Family is calling," Yusuf says. "My wife is a little bit worried I might get carried away. But I'm trying to keep her comforted in knowing that it's what I have to do right now, this job of healing. This is the way for me today."

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.