A Wind in the House of Islam: How God Is Drawing Muslims around the World to Faith in Jesus Christ

In this day, every pastor and Christian worker should have knowledge of the religion of Islam. This will help them minister to people from this background, including Muslim-background believers in the congregation. This book is clear and easy to understand and demonstrates how spiritually open many Muslims are to hearing the gospel. Its historical and statistical evidence encourages believers to engage in sharing with their Muslim friends and makes this book both exciting and challenging to read.

The book begins with a history of Islam supported by maps and pictures. Then chapters 4–12 explain each of the “nine rooms of the house of Islam”—the areas of Indo-Malaysia, East Africa, North Africa, eastern South Asia, Persia, Turkestan, West Africa, western South Asia, and Arabia. These chapters give a picture of the geographic, historical, and spiritual spread of the gospel based on interviews conducted in each region by a team of researchers led by the author. In order not to inflate statistics, researchers evaluated only movements of 1000 baptized believers or 100 churches. As missiologist Walt Baker said, “It is not what you do that counts but what you leave behind.”

The last three chapters provide a summary of the research, offering a website (www.windinthehouse.org) for feedback on the book. The last chapter gives “10 Bridges of God to Islam”: faith, prayer, Scripture, Holy Spirit activity, faithful Christian witnesses, learning from the body of Christ, “Communication Discovery,” Islam itself, and indigenization. It also gives five barriers to movements among Muslims: contentious Christians, fear and hatred, imitating Islam, ignored injustice, ignorance, and apathy. Learning to apply these bridges and avoid these barriers is worth the whole book.

This book with its discussion questions would provide a great study for a church group or seminary class. It is the one book on Islam that every Christian worker should read.