Icon of Evil received a strongly critical response from some reviewers. Simon Maxwell Apter, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, describes the book as "cursory and apparently hastily written" and "bereft of any nuance or counterargument" for its insistence on blaming the mufti for "anything and everything Islamist". Acknowledging that Husseini had indeed played an important role in inciting anti-Jewish violence, Apter concludes that Icon of Evil presents a distorted simplification of history: "To claim that Icon of Evil paints a black-and-white view of history does the book too much justice; it's an entirely black - or entirely white - story told here." [3]