Dow Jones’s Reviews > Cat On The Road To Findout > Status Update

These last ~8 pages would be better as an Afterword as its message is importance and clear. The chapter’s subtext is irrelevant. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I’m give 4 stars because there should be more album/songwriting details and the final chapters had so many years lumped together lacking details included earlier. I hope it’s not his last one!

Damn, this final chapter of 2020- says nothing of Covid struggles, his super deluxe box sets, brief Tea redux album, or anything about these years like previous chapters. The tone is more serious and preachy where most of the book contained the same messages already, so I wish there were a lot more details or explanations behind the songs and recordings like the 33 1/3 series.

I wonder why he didn’t go back to the original producer who’d invited him to make an album instead of later getting the visa and going elsewhere. The No-Fly List incident was so sad for his daughter. The bank temp who caused trouble for his eldest daughter should’ve been fired and the bank should’ve made reparations. Such a dramatic life leading up to Yusuf’s Cafe. Gotta watch that again now!

I never knew he was on VH1 Behind the Music! Music continues to pull him in and he releases a box set but then 9/11 happens and Muslims are globally hated. His first daughter gets married beforehand though. But NATO agents raid a charity office as all Muslim places got searched. What a horrible time!

Hearing about his newborn’s death was tragic and then losing his mom about a month later from brain cancer and dementia. He was kind of trapped by Saddam Hussein in a hotel & never got to speak to him about peace. Yusuf gradually feels pulled back into music w/ his audiobook & a Bosnian tape. Next opens the year 2000.

I’d never grown up knowing about the Salman Rushdie incident and googling certainly painted Yusuf in a bad light as well as the YouTube edits, but his side of the story here is so important in explaining the context of the 2 situations and his rationale behind what he said. People have always been blinded by headlines. How depressing!

Yusuf was snubbed from appearing on Live Aid because Elton John ran late. Their Muslim organization sent them to see the Palestine-Israel conflict and even though they’d rehearsed some, a few members went rogue off script w/ answers and it fell apart at the press conference. But they still experienced a lot and helped who they could.

Successfully opens his Islamia preschool and campaigns for Muslim primary schools as its unfair taxes support other religions than his own. Totally agree. Iran & Iraq paint horrible pictures of Islam and he begins to see their oppression & takes legal action against one newspaper & settles. Has 3 girls & a boy. Begins new charities after traveling abroad & seeing true poverty.

He married Fawziah very quickly w/o any dates & they’ve proven a great match. Yusuf makes more progress in Muslim studies & building a community that now w/ daughter Hasanah, he must think of schooling & thinks post-Hajj that Britain may not be the best place to raise Muslim children. Yusuf’s mom almost converts, David does but says he didn’t know what was happening, & the media is as difficult as ever.

After visiting the golden dome and saying he was a Muslim aloud, Cat’s efforts propelled him to start seriously changing his life. His family understood mostly, except David, and some friendships ended. But he decided on Yusuf as his favorite story of Joseph and what got him interested in it. Only about 250 pages aren’t about being Muslim so far, so let’s see how the rest works out. I’m interested though!