YUSUF ISLAM, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens and one of Britain’s highest- profile Muslim converts, is to release his first album for nearly 30 years.

The decision to return to the studio indicates that Islam, 58, is ready to bridge the gap between his adopted religion and pop music, which he previously derided as “a world of sin and greed”.

Some of the tracks on the album will reflect the singer’s views on politics, while others will outline his experiences since his religious teachers persuaded him to give up the pop star life in 1978 on the grounds that it was contrary to the Islamic faith.

Now, after years of soul- searching which his friends say has persuaded him to “lighten up”, the singer has decided many of his best-known songs — such as Peace Train and The Wind — carry “strong moral messages” and that he wants to “make a difference” with new work.

Recording began last week at a studio near the singer’s home in Kilburn, northwest London. The album is likely to be released next year on the Mountain of Light label.

“Most of those who buy my Cat Stevens records are not Muslim,” he wrote on the Muslim News website, “but many recognise that those songs represent the poetic aspirations of a seeker, someone thirsting for peace and trying to understand the mysteries of life.”

Songs on the new album include Indian Ocean, which he recorded as a one-off last year to raise funds for victims of the tsunami. His spokesman this weekend said he believed many of the songs would focus on the singer’s “inner life” and “the world around him”.

Islam has been an out- spoken opponent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also condemned the September 11 attacks on America as murder. He was barred from America last year on “security grounds”, although he has never had any links to terrorism.

A musician who has heard some of the recording said: “The new album will be like the old stuff, a spectacular return to the old days.”

In his previous career, Islam sold 50m albums. After his conversion in 1976, the singer, christened Steven Demetre Georgiou to a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother, became a teacher and founded an Islamic school in northwest London in 1983.

He admitted taking drugs including LSD in his pop heyday, but after his conversion recoiled even from picking up a guitar. He auctioned his instruments and gold records for Islamic charities and tried to persuade record companies not to release his songs.

His only album releases since then have been devotional, such as A Is for Allah and The Life of the Last Prophet in 1995. In 1992 he refused to allow use of his song The First Cut Is the Deepest in a commercial for Levi’s jeans, describing the ad as “overtly sexual”.

Islam claims to have moderated his position after listening to the recordings of Bosnian Muslims whose music, he says on his website, helped “inspire them with the religious spirit of faith” in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Since then, said a source close to him, he had “softened his stance”. He is now often seen without his trademark Islamic garb and is said to have appeared in western clothes in the recording studio.

A weblog on his official site also notes: “After one of his lectures on how he came to Islam, a fellow asked Yusuf if he still listens to his old songs from time to time. Brother Yusuf immediately answered ‘No’, then after a few seconds pause he started laughing and said, ‘Um, yes I do’.”

The singer’s decision to return to pop has not met with universal approval from leading Muslims.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s mosque and community affairs committee, conceded some scholars would admire Islam for reaching out to the wider world with his message of peace but said: “My personal view is the only music that should be permitted is the voice and the drum. I do not believe the electric guitar is acceptable for Muslims. Contemporary music has many associations with dance, nudity and taking drugs, which is not allowed.”

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