Interview

MCKENNA: Much of your music of the early ’70s explored romantic love as understood in conventional Western terms. In 1979, you entered into an arranged marriage, which suggests that your views might have changed. Did they?

ISLAM: Love has many levels, and love of God is very profound. It’s certainly more lasting.

MCKENNA: Why are spirituality and sexuality so often at odds with each other? It seems that most spiritual belief systems have a difficult time integrating those two energies.

ISLAM: The sexual act—separating that from love itself—is centered solely in the body, whereas spirituality is connected to the whole self. Whether it’s a female, a taste, or a sound, all these beautiful things affect our self. We are the perceivers of beauty, and that’s why sex doesn’t quite go far enough. You can go much further with the spiritual.

MCKENNA: Have you done the hajj [an arduous pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims are obliged to perform at some point in their lives]?

ISLAM: Yes. It wasn’t difficult because once you’ve decided to do something, you’re able to overcome any obstacles that appear. You can deal with it because you know what you’re doing it for.

MCKENNA: What’s your definition of sin?

ISLAM: God has decided the rules of life, whereby you don’t trespass on anybody else’s rights, and sin is something that upsets the balance of things. There are three types of sin: sin against yourself; sin against other people; and sin against God. People often sin against themselves and others and misbehave with God, too.

MCKENNA: What’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

ISLAM: Knowledge is a thing you can carry around with you, but you may not apply it. Some knowledge is indiscriminate, and it can be damaging. I recently found a wonderful definition of wisdom: It is that thing which results in the maximum good and the least harm.

MCKENNA: What’s the greatest privilege of youth?

ISLAM: Naïveté. That’s a great thing because it makes a fresh outlook possible. We need kids to remind us of how incredible this world is. People are increasingly losing their childhoods too soon, and that’s a danger. There’s a prophesy somewhere that at a certain point in history, children will be gray. It’s weird to think about, but it’s possible.

MCKENNA: When did you become an adult?

ISLAM: I don’t think any of us really do that, if we own up to it. I’m still about 17.

MCKENNA: What aspect of the future, as you envision it, is the most disturbing to you?

ISLAM: There’s a common threat facing all of us—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—and that is the Antichrist. It’s a very deep subject, and it’s a horrendous thing to contemplate. Someone will appear who is, in fact, the opposite of what he appears to be. Some people will believe in him, and that’s really frightening. In Islam, there’s a belief that Jesus will return to destroy the Antichrist, which is something many people don’t know about the Islamic faith.

MCKENNA: When you returned to music in 2006, did you have any doubts that it was the right thing to do?

ISLAM: No, because it was leading me toward a bridge, and bridges are good. We need them to cross over some of these torrential waters.

MCKENNA: You’re currently working on a musical, titled Moonshadow, that’s slated to open in London later this year. What’s the story there?

ISLAM: I’ve been working on it for six years, and it’s not finished yet, but it will actually see the light of day this year. It’s a story about a world of darkness where only the moon shines, so

people have to survive in a sunless world. The central character is a young boy who has a vision of another world where the sun shines every day and people are at peace. He shares his dream with his school friend and promises that he’ll take her to this world one day. Things go wrong for him as he grows, then he meets his moonshadow, who gives him the courage to seek that world of the lost sun. It’s an epic, everyman story, and it’s autobiographical, too. I met Paulo Coelho yesterday, and I told him how much the play was inspired by The Alchemist.