“Islam is today seen as something strange and disturbing and people are running away from it. We have to deal with that face to face. If we accept that Islam is always disturbing and strange ... so we are lost,” Yusuf who was once known as Cat Stevens, the folk and rock ‘n roll singer, told a packed theatre hall at the Cultural Foundation.

He said because of the distorted image of Islam, which he mainly blamed on the Western media, some people today are shy to declare that they are Muslims.

“Some give Islam a bad name and we cannot just tolerate that. We should come forward to correct that image. We should convince others that Islam is not that monastic concept,” he said.

Quoting a verse from the Holy Quran which reads: “Give good news and don’t make people run away”, Islam said unfortunately there are some people who used violence in the name of Islam.

“When we look at 9/11 and now 7/7 we see gross injustice and misdeeds of those who turned away from the path of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him),” he lamented.

He said because of the violence committed in the name of Islam, people are running away from the religion, adding that Islam was not to cause destruction or shed others’ blood.

The soft-spoken London native, who began a music career in the early 1970s and ultimately sold more than 30 million records with catchy hits like Wild World and Peace Train, cited several examples of why he converted to Islam.

“I remember reading, ‘if you embark on the path you will never be satisfied until you reach the truth’. I couldn’t sleep the night I read that,” said Islam, who was raised as a Greek Orthodox and attended Catholic School as a child. “I wanted to know for myself what the right religion was,” he added.

Addressing the crowd for around two-and-a-half hours, Islam said in his lecture, titled: “The Muslim Citizen in a Global Village” that the world had become really a small global village where violence is escalating and the risk of everybody getting hurt is alarmingly increasing by the day.

He also spoke about the so-called conflict of civilisations between the West and Islam, saying that the idea of a geographical split does not really exit. He said this situation was created by some people who wanted to market some ideas, in what he described as a ‘political game’.

To resolve this situation, he said, we need intellectuals, politicians and leaders to analyse the situation and come up with a solution.

Islam also briefly answered questions from the crowd which included men, women and children.

The talk was attended by Shaikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Information and Culture, and Mohammed Nakhira Al Dhahiri, Minister of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Auqaf. A large crowd, who came from Abu Dhabi and other emirates attended the lecture.