Reedings.com

Evaluating a Christianity Today review of Ridchardson's Secrets of the Koran

In the June 2006 issue of Christianity Today, Warren Larson, director of the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies at Columbia International University, reviewed seven books by American evangelicals that evaluate Islam. Three of the seven he finds sorely deficient and is especially critical of books by John MacArthur and Don Richardson, the veteran missionary and author Peace Child and Eternity in Their Hearts.

I've read many books that are critical of Islam, but very few of them were written by evangelicals. Having read Don Richardson's Secrets of the Koran: Revealing Insights into Islam's Holy Book (Regal, 2003), however, I was struck by Larson's harsh judgment of it. He denounces Richardson's "art of vilification," the "lack of integrity" in his alleged "fact-based commentary, his "unfair assumptions" and generally negative view of Mohammad. So I've gone back to Richardson's book to see if Christianity Today treats him fairly.