Good point. No Cat Stevens, no 9/11 either. Even though Cat Stevens said his words were distorted I think you're right that we should all be judged by the worst things we say, whenever in our lives we say them. It doesn't matter how many charities he's set up, or orphans helped, the rule is the rule! He didn't say 'he' wanted Rushdie dead. He only said that was the Islamic law as he understood it. Do you really think he was stupid enough to call for another person's death in London? Oh those artists! They're just too stupid to communicate clearly. No, there's more to that story but you're not interested.

I feel sorry for you. Artists are not politicians. They work alone. Each of us connects to them individually through their music. I have met a few artists in my lifetime I wish I had NOT met. Just spoiled it. I loved Cat Stevens in my youth (none of my friends did, but there was no politics then). Most liked Led Zeppelin, etc.

You can call anyone evil all you want. It's nice to feel superior. I'm sure you are superior. But superior in political attitude is not superior in art. I'll quote a stanza from Auden about Yeats:

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

To find his happiness in another kind of wood

And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.

The words of a dead man

Are modified in the guts of the living.

You can punish Cat Stevens under a "foreign code of conscience"

I and others won't.