Ahmad Eldridge Cleaver

"My father was a soldier, a fighter and a writer. He used to run with the Black Panther Party troops across the battle lines of America's ghettos in the turbulent 1960's. Those were the days when some of the young Black men went from being hunted by the police to being hunters of bad policemen who liked to see African-American blood. My father and my mother were part of the leadership of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver. His voice was heard by many. His was "Soul on Ice" and mine is "Soul on Islam."

SOUL ON ISLAM is the first book written by Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, son the late Eldridge Cleaver, 1960's Civil Rights Leader and Minister of Information, the Black Panther Party. His father's Soul on Ice (1968) was a best seller and still in print today. Born in Algiers in 1969, young Cleaver has lived with his family in Doha, Qatar, where he teaches English as a Second Language. Ahmad Cleaver's book comes at a time when the public, Western and Eastern, seeks and needs information about Islam and its Mission as recorded in the Quran. Cleaver's story entails his odyssey, the journey of an African American college educated young man that led to his embracing Islam. In 104 generative pages, he includes biographical chronicles, erudite comments about Islam from scholars, and statements from persons who have become Muslims, along with footnotes and glossary. Mr. Cleaver tells of his becoming a Muslim twelve years ago after much study, research, and consultation both in the East and West. Although Mr. Cleaver's text is positive as expected from the pen of a sincere Follower, it is not designed to recruit, but to present why he became a believer in Islam and the influence its concepts and precepts had on his life, life style, and spiritual growth. In tones of an autobiography and a memoir, Ahmad Cleaver briefly sketches his lineage and presents insights into the 1960's. He includes the incident when his father Eldridge was arrested at the age of seventeen for a murder that occurred ten years ago when he was seven years old and of his father's later flight from America via Canada to Cuba, Algiers, and France, and his voluntary return to America. Young Cleaver tells of his becoming years when he was raised in a Christian home where his parents provided books on Black Historical figures for him and his younger sister and "instilled in them that crime was another form of slavery." Cleaver narrates SOCIAL JUSTICE that Islam offers and the "The true message of Islam." He states, "I never confuse and mix the justifiable struggle for justice with the unjustifiable terrorism, suicide bombs and the murder of innocent bystanders." In the Chapter "How I Came to Embrace Islam," Ahmad Cleaver tells of reading stories in the Quran that he had learned during childhood, of his pondering over how different Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, "yet they had many of the same stories and held on to most of the same prophets." The foregoing is a chapter that readers should read again and again. Cleaver explains reasons for the Muslim women's dress code—the function of the Hijab. He addresses the true status of Muslim women as opposed to the interpretation that they are considered inferior. He explains true manhood according to Islam and clarifies that Mohammed is a Prophet, a human being, a messenger of God, and not Allah. He explains "Polygamy in Islam vs. the Myth of Monogamy in America," another chapter that a reader may want to read more than once. With the Foreword by Dr. James (Jimmy) Jones, Chair of World Religions, Manhattan College, Purchase, NY Director, Islamic Transitional House, New Haven, CT, 2006, the entire book is a Must Read Again and Again whether the reader rejects portions or all of its concepts. Soul on Islam is enlightening, devoid of wordiness, and narrated with sincere intellectual literary simplicity.

- Sandra E. Bowen Retired College Professor