Soul on Islam [Paperback]

Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2006

“Soul on Islam” is the first book written by Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, the son of best selling author Eldridge Cleaver. This book is an informative memoir sketching his life with his parents, activists in America's civil rights movement, including details of their life in Algeria, where he was born, France and in America. Then the book continues to unfold and gives the reader a very moving and beautifully put description of how the author came to embrace Islam twelve years ago. He has spent nearly a decade living and traveling amongst the Muslims in countries in the Arabian Peninsula and in Africa and in the book he shares some of the stories and scenes that he has passed through while living in Sudan and in Qatar.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

His name is Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver and he is a 36 years old African-American. He was born in Algeria while his father, who was a leader in the Black Panther Party, was in exile from the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960's. Then the family lived in France and he visited America on two occasions before his family returned to the USA when he was 6 years old.

Product Details

• Paperback: 102 pages
• Publisher: Seaburn (April 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159232097X
• ISBN-13: 978-1592320974
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,396,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insight Into Islam, October 5, 2006

By 

Sandra E. Bowen (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul on Islam (Paperback)

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 lives 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

Writer

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Man's Explanation of His Journey from Christianity to Islam, January 30, 2007

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Soul on Islam (Paperback)

Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver is the son of Eldridge Cleaver, of Black Panther and Soul on Ice fame. Although his parents were Americans, his father for a time fled charges in California and the family spent time in Cuba, Algeria, and France. The author was born in Algeria during these travels. The family eventually returned to the United States where a plea agreement terminated the charges with community service. Mr. Cleaver now lives in Qatar.

The bulk of the book describes the author's search for ideal spirituality and his investigation of the major religions. Although raised as a Christian by Christian parents, Mr. Cleaver often saw scenes that disturbed him. As a youngster, he hadn't liked the way he saw French people treating Arabs. In the United States, he felt that many Christians were hypocrites in saying one thing in church and leaving their spirituality behind them when they left church. Rampant immorality in the forms of drug use, drunkenness, and illicit sex disturbed him. In studying the Quran, he found that the text spoke to him more eloquently than the Bible did, and he liked the Muslim rules of conduct. Soon, he converted and moved to the Middle East.

The book also contains his criticisms of Christianity, Judaism, and contemporary morality in the United States. He contrasts those criticisms with an idealization of Islam . . . while drawing a distinction between suicide bombers and ordinary Muslims who follow that faith. He also offers an extensive criticism of U.S. foreign policy towards Muslim nations.

The book concludes with the personal testimonies of several others who converted to Islam.

Mr. Cleaver emphasizes that Islam is the truest form of monotheism, that those who follow Islam are better behaved than those who follow Christianity or Judaism, that the Bible isn't God's word in the way that the Quran is, and that the rules of Islam make it easier to be well behaved because there are fewer temptations as the whole community works together to avoid sin (especially emphasizing the role of women being covered so that unrelated men will not see their flesh and be tempted and the virtues of polygamy).

Testimonies like this one are valuable for people of all religions in understanding the differences among the religions and what appeals to a new convert to Islam. If you are wondering about the rapid growth of Islam in the United States, this book will be a valuable source of information.

If you want to study Islam, you'll have to investigate beyond what this book describes.

May God bless you!