Education Quote by Cat Stevens

There is a soft power move in the phrase "the very first lesson": it frames Islam not as a dense theology you have to earn your way into, but as an immediate, graspable moral orientation. Coming from Cat Stevens, a figure whose public identity once revolved around tender, searching pop songs, the line reads like a bridge-building gesture aimed at listeners who might expect religion to arrive with rules, not relief.

The intent is apologetic in the best sense: not defensive, but clarifying. Stevens is staking a claim about what should sit at the front of the Qur'an in the public imagination. He chooses "unity and peace" because those are emotionally legible to a broad audience and because they counter the post-9/11 media script that often treats Islam as an explanation for violence rather than a tradition with an internal ethic. The subtext is: if your first association with Islam is conflict, you started in the wrong place.

It also works as an autobiographical rewrite. "Learnt" implies a process, a conversion not as rupture but as education - the continuation of the same seeker persona fans already knew. The quote doesn't argue doctrine; it argues mood. By making unity and peace the entry point, Stevens positions his faith as a completion of his earlier humanism, and invites the audience to meet the Qur'an where he says he did: at the level of conscience, not controversy.