The author belongs to a sect of Islam called "Qadian", also called the Ahmadiyya movement. They are not considered to me Muslims, but followers of an ideology that is a corruption of Islam. If you want to learn about Islam as is practiced by more than a billion worldwide, stay away from this book!

Potential readers of this book should disregard the knee-jerk reactions of certain "reviewers" (hardly an appropriate term with which to dignify their writings) and think for themselves. It is first of all necessary to note that the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, represented by the author of this title, differs fundamentally in its conception of Islam from the "Qadiani" organisation. As to the notion that either movement is not Muslim, it is sufficient to note the following reported statement of the Holy Prophet Muhammad: "Whoever calls people who recite the Islamic profession of faith 'Non-Muslim', such a person is himself/herself nearer to unbelief", and the Quranic verse: "Do not say to anyone who offers you the Islamic salutation, 'You are not a believer.' " And then again, we have the crackpot notion, wrapped up in rather questionable English, that the Islamic movement represented by the author was a front for 19th century British colonialism, rather than what it really was, namely a movement for Islamic revival in the face of merciless anti-Islamic propaganda from Christian missionaries and Arya-Samajists, not at all helped by the obscurantism, opportunism and superstitious mentality of the professional Muslim clerics of the time (and today!). Anyone who really cares for the truth could do a whole lot worse than start with this concise and wholly Islamic outline of the life and outstanding personality of the Last of the Prophets.

events from the life of the Holy Prophet are narrated in very simple and appealing format. Provides very useful information about the life of the Holy prophet (PBUH). It can be very helpful for parents and children to discuss and study together.

THIS IS NOT A BEGINNING BOOK FOR SELF TEACHERS AND FOCUS IS ON THE ABC'S NOT SPEAKING AND PHONICS.

This book was recommended to me as a good resource for learning Arabic, but after a thorough review of it, I went back to the resources that I already owned. This book is not designed for the truly neophite Arabic student, even though the title and introduction would lead one to believe that. One of the most obvious shortcomings of the book is the tiny font of the printing, which often makes it difficult for the student, who is not familiar with Arabic, to differentiate the new letters & symbols. One advantage of the book is that there are exercises at the end of each section, even though they are more geared for a classroom, not for an individual learner. "The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It" by Nicholas Awde & Putros Samano, is a much better beginning resource for the complete beginner.

Arabic is an interesting language. There are 200 million Arabs in the world and Arabic is the religious langua franca for at least 1.5 billion Muslims. You would think that with such a language there is a systemic way in which it is taught, right? WRONG!

You can buy a 1,000 Arabic language books versus 1,000 French language books and the thousand French books will pretty much be consistent in their approach and the thousand Arabic books will have 1,000 different approaches. When you learn a Romance language, you start off with the alphabet, then you move on to numbers, then the days of the week, the months of the year, how do you pronounce your name or how do you ask someone else's name, etc. In most Arabic books, you never get that. You get thrown words and sentences as if you know the language. In the Arabic alphabet there are 28 characters. Each has three different forms. A letter can appear one way at the beginning of a word and look another way in the middle and yet another way at the end. So when you learn Arabic you must learn 84 different characters. You think any of these Arabic language authors care to tell you that? Guess again.

Additionally, just when it is getting good, there are three short vowels and long vowels in Arabic. The short vowels are what you really need to focus upon. If you are learning Classical Arabic which is the language of the Holy Quran, you will see the short vowels in each word. In modern Arabic, the Arabs do not mark words with the short vowel, so for non-Arab speakers how do you know how to read and pronounce word that you are unfamiliar with, if the vowels are not included? So you still want to study Arabic?

If you buy this book, you buy it because you are learning Arabic with a teacher and you have had some Arabic before hand. This book will really help you out. If you are trying to learn this language on your own--forget it. Most of these Arabic language books are not structured in that way.

This book has a lot of value to someone who is studying with a teacher and has seen the language before and knows the alphabet. This is not the book for a beginner with no prior experience with Arabic. You would be completely helpless with this one.

First the good news. Mr. Pickthall has provided an introduction that satisfies the questions a semi-casual reader such as myself has as to the origins of Islam. The more important chapters ("Surahs") also have additional notes that explain their historical context, which is appreciated.

Now the bad news: the translation overall has serious problems and some of Mr. Pickthall's commentary on Islam is laughable. The most glaring problem is his insistence on using archaic grammar forms, such as "thee," "thou," "ye" and so forth in the text, as well as uncommon or archaic words -- such as "troth" and "aught" -- when modern and normal ones like "faithfulness" and "anything" would have been appropriate. I recently read a modern English translation of the Apocrypha, and found it significantly easier to read than my trusty King James translation of the Bible. I think I would have had a similarly easier experience if Mr. Pickthall had provided a modern version of the Koran.

Mr. Pickthall also has an annoying habit of translating the past participle as "used to," instead of using the straight past tense or the pluperfect. So, where a normal translation might read: "We make them taste a dreadful doom because they disbelieved" or "had disbelieved," Mr. Pickthall renders it "We make them taste a dreadful doom because they used to disbelieve." That may be a literal translation from the Arabic, but in English it's jarring, and after seeing this oddball verb form dozens if not hundreds of times, it really grates.

The revisionism. I actually laughed out loud at Mr. Pickthall's statement that Mohammed "raised women from the status of chattel to complete legal equality with man" (p. xxvi). That's nonsense. For crying out loud, in the birthplace of Mohammed, women aren't even allowed to drive cars. And the Koran itself doesn't place women on anywhere near an equal level to men. For example, men can divorce their wives by saying "I divorce you" three times, but women have no such equal right (S-rah 2:229). Men also receive greater inheritances than women. Surah 4:177. See also generally Surah 2:226-7; 4:34. Mohammed gets props for condemning female infanticide (Surah 16:58-9) but that's hardly the same thing as gender equality, I think you'd agree.

As for the Koran itself -- well, it has an intellectual consistency and vigor that Christians are unaccustomed to, since the Bible has numerous authors and styles, and clashing views of comportment, nature of God, justice, duty, salvation and mercy. The biblical author that comes closet to style and substance to Mohammed is probably Jeremiah. The Koran is fanatically monotheistic in its outlook, and the book's requirements to worship Allah could best be summarized as carrot-and-stick: worship Allah and follow His directions and be rewarded; if you don't, you'll be severely punished. The book is moreover extremely repetitive, dour, utterly humorless and, despite its energy, much more tedious than other scriptures I have read.

One more thing. Let's dispense with the political correctness and admit that the truth: the Koran provides ample justification for and/or endorsement of those who perpetrated the atrocities of September 11, 2001. See Surahs 2:190-1, 193, 246; 3:157-8, 169, 195; 4:74, 76-7; 8:39, 65; 9:5, 29, 36, 111, 123; 22:39; 47:4; 61:4.

I have this translation, the Yusuf Ali translation, and the "Translation Committee" in Istanbul (Ozek, et al) versions.

Pickthall and Ali have some obsolete style English in them that can get in the way of understanding them; but combined with the Istanbul version it adds understanding. In many ways Pickthall's translation maintains more "depth" and some of the fluidity of the Arabic - at least according to some of the folks I know who read Arabic. Ali has some odd explanations from places like Shakespeare that seem out of place.

So, I consider this one well worth purchasing - especially if you find the version that also includes the transliteration so you can learn to recite from it.

This book was my introduction to Islam--clear, concise translation was much appreciated. I learned, also, a little of why Islam seems incapable of producing a Jesus of Nazareth, a Buddha, a St. Francis of Assisi, a Gandhi, or a Martin Luther King--only violent fanatics whose path to God is through the bodies of their perceived enemies. My name is withheld for a good reason: Christians, Jews, and Buddhists tend not to murder the critics of their respective religions. Islam, unfortunately, is a dangerous "child religion," as exemplified by its adherents in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere. There are no Christian, Jewish or Buddhist "Salman Rushdies," if the reader will notice.

This essentially contains the speech that Elijah Muhammad made after Malcolm X's assassination. Mostly for the faithful who still followed Elijah Muhammad as opposed to Malcolm. To fully put this into context, one must have some familiarity with the events surrounding Malcolm's death. As with most of Elijah Muhammad's writngs and/or speeches, it's not likely to appeal to those who do not consider themselves admireres or followers of his. Not likely to win any new converts.

This was an excellent book, even for a reader that does not have any formerly gained knowledge of the life and career of Malcolm X.

My experience with this book was more confusion than teaching. There are to many unfinished thoughts in the examples and when the problems at the end of several chapters were solved the answers in the book were incorrect. NEEDS WORK !

This book is notable in its integration of ABET criteria for design content into its text. It also integrates SPICE very well. The entry to the subject is careful to build context, explaining the role of signals and signal processing, and how the processing of signals leads to circuits. It also is careful to emphasize the design process and how it is related to SPICE and to analysis methods.

There are some sources of confusion, for example, Fig. 2.17(b) and Fig. 2.18(b) contain circuit elements pertaining to reverse bias of a diode that are never explained, including a diode symbol never introduced or explained. The discussion of a peak detector as a demodulator employs a series connection of voltage sources (p. 119) instead of a multiplication of the modulating and carrier waveforms.

Overall, an excellent introduction, more modern and much better at context and motivation than most.

The concept for this book is great. To compare and contrast the central figures of the worlds two largest religions.Phipps starts out well enough, reviewing the gross distortions and outrageous accusations that have been made about Islam over the centuries since its birth. He then outlines the history and development of Islam and Christianity more or less in tandem, and things begin to go seriously wrong. It is apparent from his writing and references that he is able to access little primary source material on Islam, and therefore has to fall back on superficial and contradictory secondary source material. Phipps' central thesis appears to be that the Koran was essentially 'lifted' from Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and that much of its material was selectively chosen to benefit Mohammed personally. Phipps' claims that Mohammed (who like virtually all people at the time was illiterate) must have been able to read to carry this off, so in his history of Islam, he uses a very dubious secondary source to give a misleading account of the most dramatic and central episode of Muslim history- the first appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mohammed while he is meditating in a cave. Phipps' account has the angel tell Mohammed "Proclaim"(he even gives the Arabic 'Iqra'). This is an inaccurate translation of the word, which actually means "Read!"(or 'read aloud') in Phipps version, the Prophet remains silent. However, in actuality, in the story that every Muslim schoolchild knows, Muhammad answers the angel quaveringly "But I cant read". Furthermore, in a time and place where people were know intimately by their communities, it would be impossible that someone who had such a rare talent as literacy would not be known for it, any more than it would not be possible that I could live next door to the President and not know it. The sheer amount of detailed historical material that has been preserved from that time about the Prophet, including much material that is unflattering, precludes this possibility. There is not a single historian that I (or Dr Phipps)knows of that would seriously entertain this theory. This is only the most easily refuted inaccuracy in the book, and I could give many more. Essentially, Phipps has ignored or missed 1400 years of Islamic thought and commentary to hang his own interpretation on selected secondary source material.How unfortunate. This could have been a great book. If you are looking for a similar book that compares Islamic and Christian thought, for the Christian reader, I would recommend "Ishmael Instructs Isaac- an introduction to the Qur'an for Bible readers" by John Kaltner.

Phipps makes a comparison between Muhammad and Jesus in order to promote understanding between Muslim and Christian followers. To do this, he gives an intersting and unbiased point-of-view on the two leaders that triggeres further curiosity on the subject. I would suggest reading this book to gain an objective beginning perspective on Isalm, its teachings, and how these teachings relate to Christrian ideas.

this book is providing unneccesary info about islam that is false and very unacceptable.. especially page 17 when he writes
"The modern Westerner has no difficulty in showing how Muhammad may have been mistaken." it is
biased
and totally not reflecting history but showing a great deal of propaganda..

If you're looking to gain an understanding of the life of Muhammad, grab this book. Watt presents a prose description of Muhammad's life, backed by sound and comprehensive study. It is actually enjoyable reading, almost like a story, yet completely historically accurate. (Or as much as we can be.) Watt does not make either extreme mistake of simply accepting the traditions of the Hadith or the Qur'an as absolute truth; or of looking only at Western denigrations of Islam. Rather, he appears to recognize historical truths in the Qur'anic traditions, and in Western and Eastern scholarship. If you've been trying to learn about Islam and have spent time looking over the Qur'an, this is *the* book to turn to get that background on Muhammad and "flesh" him out. Watt shows a human, beyond the traditions and myths, that changed his world, and then the rest of the planet.

The title of the book leads the reader to believe that all the secrets of a secret society such Freemasonry are/were going to be revealed. The truth is that the essential secret or basis of Freemasonry is revealed by The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. One has to understand that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was divinely commissioned and sent to ex-slave in the West for his resurrection and to make him fit to be accepted among his own Islamic brethen world over before the Final Judgement. How does that pertain to Freemasonry? The essential element or ritual in Freemasonry deals with the story of Hiram Abiff. Hiram Abiff was the master architect of Solomon's Temple. He was attacked at high noon, struck in the head and was killed. He was dragged from East to West and buried in a shallow grave. Many were sent to search for Hiram and they found him dead. They tried to resurrect him but had no power. It would take a Master (God) to resurrect the Master Architect. Hiram Abiff is symbolic for African peoples. The story of Hiram Abiff is a similitude of the African Holocaust, the suffering of African peoples in the West and how African-Americans are wollowing in a shallow grave of ignorance. The Master is a symbol of God or a God-sent person equipped with the spiritual power to raise the mentally dead to life. So this is all symbolism for African History and the African Holocaust and preludes or answers why Islam was literally and figuratively revealed to African-Americans. If this doesn't make sense, then you will have to study The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his mission and ministry and revisit this book and then it will all come together. Much of what I said is also wrapped in Scriptual stories in the Bible. Look in the books Ezekial, Isaiah, Daniel and Hababbuk.

In this book The Honorable Elijah Muhammad goes about the process of explaining the story of Hiram Abiff and how it relates to African-American and how it was a beautiful enigmatic story that describes an actual historical event and people.

I CAN ONLY WONDER WHERE THIS "GREAT" BROTHER HAS RECIEVED HIS INFORMATION ABOUT THIS "FRATERNITY".

I was rather disappointed at this anthology compiled by Ibn Warraq. This spurious anthology of writings on Muhammad and early Islam "can be seen as an implicit criticism of this optimistic view of our historical evidence for the rise of early Islam." From a historians stand point, this book seems to be nothing but a 'revisionist circus." Rather than being a quest, as the title suggests, this work attempts to refute the traditional view and legitimacy of Islam and its founder. Obvious contradictory statements concerning how much historical material is available on the life of Muhammad range from an overwhelming amount to practically none at all. The book, edited by Warraq (Why I Am Not a Muslim), readily admits to the anti-Islamic bias of some of its contributors. For example, Henri Lammens, who authored three chapters, is described as one who had "a holy contempt for Islam." Is Ibn Warraq serious, or is he just trying to cover up for Lammens treatment of the Quran? Henri Lammens himself refers to the Qur'an as an "infinitely shabby journal." The authors presented in this book are very scholarly, and are essential contributors to the study of early Islam. However, given the editors position and agenda (anti-Islamic polemic), this work is not balanced and is sure to cause a good deal of controversy in the Muslim world. As a student of ancient Semitic linguistics, I would state that Ibn Warraq is not qualified nor is he (she?) needed to be our guide in this "Historical Quest."
This is a partisan work compiled by the editor hiding behind the nom de plume of Ibn Warraq (lit. "Son of a copyist"). a name redolent of medieval theological controversies. The editor is clearly courting controversy by indulging in a self-serving, polarizing discourse in his lengthy introduction, which sets the tone for the rest of the book. The introductory radd consists of two essays composed by Ibn Warraq and fellow "zindiq" Ibn Rawandi (another cleverly crafted pseudonym). These two essays contain a recital of the masawi of authors from what I will call the non-rejectionist school, and the maf akhir of authors from what I will call the rejectionist school; Ibn Warraq and Ibn Rawandi zealously endorse the views of the latter school. As is well known to Islamicists, the adherents of the rejectionist school advocate the whole-scale jettisoning of the written classical Islamic sources, primarily dating from the third/ninth century, for reconstructing the history of early Islam. Juxtaposed to them are those scholars from the non-rejectionist school who, in varying degrees, call rather for a critical re-reading of the traditional sources in order to present a credible account of the rise and development of the Muslim polity. The first group, the "Islamic Propagandists" in our editor's constellation, selectively include Montgomery Watt, Fuat Sezgin, Nabia Abbott, Fred Donner, C. H. M. Veersteegh, and Estelle Whelan, while the second group, the "Critical Vanguards," include Henri Lammens, Edward Muir, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, and John Wansbrough, among others. Our copyist's son clearly has an ideological axe to grind: anyone who revises, refines, challenges, or nuances the arguments of the rejectionist school is depicted as doing so from sinister motives, while those who unequivocally champion its views are understood to be motivated by the purest and most single-minded scholarly devotion to the indefatigable pursuit of Historical Truth. Poor editing, sloppy transliteration, and ad hominen attacks on certain authors from the "enemy" camp, especially Watt, add to the chagrin of the reader. Ibn Warraqs failure to even give a fair account causes him to omit different theories. Some of which seemingly challenges the revisionist position. The works of Uri Rubin and Harold Motzki are not even mentioned. Sadly, the rest of the book is an anthology of previously published essays by Ernest Renan, Henri Lammens (three articles in all), C. H. Becker, Arthur Jeffery, Joseph Schacht, Lawrence I. Conrad (two essays), Andrew Rippin, J. Koren and Y. D. Nevo, and F. E. Peters, all of which in varying ways question traditional interpretations of the rise of Islam and the career of its Prophet, and/or of the composition and growth of specific Islamic corpora: scripture, sira, hadith, tafsir, and [ta.sup.[contains]]rikh. The final section consists of two essays by Herbert Berg and G. R. Hawting that are adulatory assessments of the significance of John Wansbrough's hypotheses for contemporary studies of early Islam.
There is no doubt that many of the above writers have raised pertinent and provocative questions that have been and continue to be debated by scholars in the field. They raise challenges and questions concerning the Islamic origins and the historical position of Muhammad. To give a quick example, the work of F.E. Peters is remarkable and erudite. Unfortunately for "Iby," the consequence of this book is that it simply excludes different views on Islamic origins. Ibn Warraq does not even include a single "non-revisionist" theory, which is unfortunate for a "true" historian. Ibn Warraq lacks the skills to handle Arabic texts properly and assumes that the revisionist position is static. By being a former Muslim, and his choice of scholars while omitting others, causes him to commit the same sin that he accuses Muslims of committing: bias and uncritical reporting. Ibn Warraq also forgets that there is a debate going on as well. But Ibn Warraq is not interested in debate; he wants nothing less than wholesale conversion to his point of view, touted as that of a friqa najiya within the community of scholars of Islam. This kind of triumphalist grandstanding needlessly poisons the atmosphere and stymies efforts to engage in honest scholarly discussion. Ibn Warraq is no authority in the field of Islamic origins. With mentioning that, he should not be taken seriously as our guide to the study. Quite frankly, Ibn Warraq should have never pursued this endeavor, since he will be slapped with being biased because he is a former Muslim. The book overall contains very scholarly essays in which one would benefit from the field. However, to have Iby as our guide to the field is absurd. Ibn Warraq "we" don't need you!

Who was the Prophet Muhammad?

By Daniel Pipes The Jerusalem Post Friday, May 12 2000

In a well-known and oft-repeated statement, the French scholar Ernest Renan wrote in 1851 that, unlike the other founders of major religions, the Prophet Muhammad "was born in the full light of history." Indeed, look up Muhammad in any reference book and the outlines of his life are confidently on display: birth in CE 570 in Mecca, career as a successful merchant, first revelation in 610, flight to Medina in 622, triumphant return to Mecca in 630, death in 632. Better yet, read the 610-page standard account of Muhammad's life in English, by W. Montgomery Watt, and find a richly detailed biography. There are, however, two major problems with this standard biography, as explained in a fascinating new study, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, edited by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus Books). First, the massive documentation about Muhammad derives in every instance from Arabic written sources - biographies, collections of the prophet's sayings and doings, and so on - the earliest of which date from a century and a half after his death. Not only does this long lapse of time cast doubt on their accuracy, but internal evidence strongly suggests the Arabic sources were composed in the context of intense partisan quarrels over the prophet's life. To draw an American analogy: It's as though the first accounts of the US Constitutional Convention of 1787 were only recently written down, and this in the context of polemical debates over interpretation of the Constitution. Second, the earlier sources on the prophet's life that do survive dramatically contradict the standard biography. In part, these are literary sources in languages other than Arabic (such as Armenian, Greek, or Syriac); in part, they are material remains (such as papyri, inscriptions, and coins). Although the unreliability of the Arabic literary sources has been understood for a century, only recently have scholars begun to explore its full implications, thanks largely to the ground-breaking work of the British academic John Wansbrough. In the spirit of "interesting if true," they look skeptically at the Arabic written sources and conclude that these are a form of "salvation history" - self-serving, unreliable accounts by the faithful. The huge body of detail, revisionist scholars find, is almost completely spurious. So unreliable do the revisionists find the traditional account, Patricia Crone has memorably written, that "one could, were one so inclined, rewrite most of Montgomery Watt's biography of Muhammad in reverse." For example, an inscription and a Greek account leads Lawrence Conrad to fix Muhammad's birth in 552, not 570. Crone finds that Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca but hundreds of kilometers to the north. Yehuda Nevo and Judith Koren find that the classical Arabic language was developed not in today's Saudi Arabia but in the Levant, and that it reached Arabia only through the colonizing efforts of one of the early caliphs. Startling conclusions follow from this. The Arab tribesmen who conquered great swathes of territory in the seventh century were not Moslems, perhaps they were pagans. The Koran is a not "a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia," but a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age. Most broadly, "there was no Islam as we know it" until two or three hundred years after the traditional version has it (more like CE 830 than 630); it developed not in the distant deserts of Arabia but through the interaction of Arab conquerors and their more civilized subject peoples. A few scholars go even further, doubting even the existence of Muhammad. Though undertaken in a purely scholarly quest, the research made available in Quest for the Historical Muhammad raises basic questions for Moslems concerning the prophet's role as a moral paragon; the sources of Islamic law; and the God-given nature of the Koran. Still, it comes as little surprise to learn that pious Moslems prefer to avoid these issues. Their main strategy until now has been one of neglect - hoping that revisionism, like a toothache, will just go away . But toothaches don't spontaneously disappear, and neither will revisionism. Moslems one day are likely to be consumed by efforts to respond to its challenges, just as happened to Jews and Christians in the nineteenth century, when they faced comparable scholarly inquiries. Those two faiths survived the experience - though they changed profoundly in the process - and so will Islam.

(The writer is director of the Philadelphia Middle East Forum and wrote his first book on early Islamic history.)

Of Warraq's first three books with Prometheus, this is by far the finest of the lot. "Why I Am Not a Muslim" served as a basic introduction for those who seek to criticize Islam, and "Origins of the Koran" was a slight step up in the level of difficulty (dare I say, "intermediate kufr"?). This book would have to be considered advanced level scholarship as far as Prometheus' Islamic studies section goes.

Warraq's introduction gets into the world of the ahadith and sira literature, the only information on the "historical" Muhammad. This makes for a great information on the problems with the reliability of these sources, such as the fact that many of the more respective compilations came about centuries after the time Muhammad allegedly lived. The second chapter of the book is an essay by Ibn al-Rawandi, it is a brilliant and sharped-tongued attack on Islamic historical sources that compliments the book perfectly.

The rest of the book, like Origins of the Koran, is a compilation of scholarly essays from other sources. Some of it is rather old, but the more recent works are highly entertaining. The best of the essays, in my opinion, is Lawrence Conrad's Abraha and Muhammad, which exposes the weakness of the Islamic calendar, causing many events measured by it to also come into question.

This book has some serious strong points. Dodds does a good job of pointing out problems with some of Louis Farrakhan's most famous speeches. She holds nothing back as she shows inconsistencies and hypocrisy in Farrakhan's speeches. She unveils his core goals of converting blacks to the militant Nation of Islam rather than to promote peace as he says. I would definitely recommend someone who is considering joining the NOI to read this book first. Dodds is definitely well-read in the scriptures. However, I was a little turned off at some inconsistencies at the beggining of the book. In talking about the Bible, she mentions the Apocrypha as an "unauthorized biography" of the Bible. What a huge mistake! The so-called apocryphal books have been in the Septuagint, which was used by Christ and His Apostles, since 180 B.C. She also makes the statement that "Orthodox Christians believe that these documents should not be included in the Bible." Another huge mistake! The Orthodox Church, which is the Church founded by Christ and His Apostles, has ALWAYS included the Apocryphal books in the Old Testament canon since the Orthodox Church has not changed its Old Testament canon since the time of Christ! It was not until about 500 years ago that Christian Old Testaments began to appear without these books. Also, in discussing what Christians believe, there is no mention of the Orthodox Church, the Church which was founded at Pentecost in the Bible, and which has flourished in North Africa since the first century. It would benefit African-Americans to know this, especially since so much emphasis is put on the Church in the Bible. But otherwise, it is a wonderful book which offers African-Americans considering Islam a powerful alternative in the truths of Christianity.

This is a fairly good basic text. Elreta's assessments of Farrakhan and his leadership in the Nation of Islam had some strong elements to them. First, she brought forth some pretty strong arguments against some of the content in various speeches delivered by Farrakhan. Second, while she is not a biblical scholar, prima facie, her use of certain Scripture gave good support for some of her arguments. Third, the way the book was outlined, followed and presented was very helpful in staying on course with what she was trying to communicate. For a beginning basic text, I would recommend this book, but with these warnings.

First, the book lacked strong scholarly support. What I mean by this is, it would have been more beneficial for Elreta's research to document many of the claims she made. While she hit the nail on the head with some of her claims regarding apologetics and certain other theological issues, it would have been much more advantageous to her research to quote from biblical scholar's, theologian's and apologists's works.

Second, some of her assertions about the Islamic religion were wrong. For instance, on page 13 she declares that Orthodox (using the term to make distinctions between Islam and it's aberrant cult The Nation of Islam) Muslims do not believe God (Allah) is spirit. This is wrong. For the Muslim, no matter what sect, Allah is spirit. The Muslim metaphysic is one of the material (matter) and the nonmaterial. If Allah does not fall into one of these then what is He? However, ultimately, nothing can be predicated of Allah. The Qu'ran is fairly clear Allah is not material. Thus, a stronger research base in the religion of Islam would have kept Elreta from making some of these simple errors.

Aside from these factors, the book is pretty good. It could be one among other places to begin research on the Nation of Islam. It is at least a step in the right direction.

Anyone who is "really" seeking the truth should read this book. Minister Farakhan is able to make many claims about the Bible, but no one ever challenges him on the Word of God. Why does he quote the Bible so much out of context?--because he knows ultimately God's truth does not appear in the pages of the Koran. For those who think, Ms. Dodd is making a personal attack on Mr. Farakhan, then they haven't read the book. Ms. Dodd is only pointing out the discrepancies and inaccuracies of his teachings and the Nation of Islam doctrine. Christianity has been analyzed and criticized for 2,000 years and it continues to withstand the attacks. However, whenever Christians analyze and contrast the so-called truth in other religions, it is viewed as a personal attack on the messenger. Ms. Dodd skillfully dissects Mr. Farakhan's own words and compares them with the essential Biblical doctrine of the Christian faith. The writing, research and clarity of thought points out some of the ridiculous errors that Farakhan makes in his speech and writings. All NOI followers should read "Another Message to the Black Man" with an open mind. How Farakhan can lead thousands of people astray saying that he is some kind of messiah, while perpetuating views that essentially teach hate and separation should provide a clue that he cannot be a God-sent man, but one being used by the devil to deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ms. Dodd takes his speeches and exposes them for what they are--nothing more than empty words that exort a man who seeks to make himself equal with God by promoting cult teaching. "Another Message to the Black Man" should be read by all Christians who think Christians have anything in common with the NOI. It is naive to think so. Members of NOI only need to seek answers for themselves if they really want to know what the Bible teaches. You won't get it by following Farakhan. Ms. Dodd has done a great job of putting it all together for you. "The Trouble with Farakhan" is good foundation Biblical teaching. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free".