Hugh Goddard’s well documented and well written booklet discusses Islam with particular reference to its historical development and current issues within the British context. His tone throughout is irenic and he is at pains to remind Christian readers that they should take any plank out of their own eyes before finding fault with their brothers’.

Yet for all the booklet’s good intentions, there are serious deficiencies. Goddard fails to mention the Qur’an’s flat denial of the crucifixion of Christ with all the implications this has for the veracity of the NT and the validity of Christianity. Likewise the Qur’an’s rejection of the divine Sonship of Jesus may originally have been based upon a misunderstanding of the Christian position, as Goddard suggests, but it is now a conscious and serious disagreement about the logical coherence of a more sophisticated definition of the relationship between Jesus and God. Similarly, discussion of the injustices Muslims in Britain feel about failure to attain their goals over the Rushdie affair are often seen in the context of the absence of rights Christian groups enjoy in predominantly Muslim societies. In addition, the legal circumstances governing blasphemy and the inner workings of Military Intelligence operations are quite separate. The imperatives of the gospel direct the Decade of Evangelism and not the sensibilities of Muslims for whom the word ‘crusade’ has an ominous ring. To abandon the Decade of Evangelism simply out of deference to Muslim concerns, especially when those concerns are based on only a hazy idea of what evangelism implies, would be a form of spiritual suicide.