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Islam and the Rule of Justice: Image and Reality in Muslim Law and Culture by Lawrence Rosen (review)

P professor emeritus, Lawrence Rosen, has long written about Islamic law and how people apply it to advance their ideas of justice. On the heels of his important book on the plurality and entanglements of ordinary Moroccans’ intellectual lives, Two Arabs, a Berber, and a Jew (2016), Rosen has now published Islam and the Rule of Justice: Image and Reality in Muslim Law and Culture. The previous work punctured stereotypes about Arabs while arguing for the richness, necessity, and, indeed, refuge of their diversity. The new work ventures into common misperceptions about Islamic law, revealing it to be a living system “found as much in the marketplace and the home as in the textbooks, a law that is deeply subject to local custom, factual content, permissible interpretation, client choice, and judicial discretion” (3). As it does, Islam and the Rule of Justice orients itself towards Western audiences, taking up misconceptions they invariably possess about Islamic law, that it: 1) disadvantages women and minorities; 2) thrives on a misplaced understanding of jihad as “armed encounter”; 3) gives judges infinite discretion; 4) is characterized by brutal punishments; 5) focuses on interests of the collective rather than individuals; 6) privileges enforceable rules over procedural justice; 7) is stagnant, wanting for innovation; 8) is enforced by state actors who lack independence; 9) is overwhelmingly text-based; and 10) fails to integrate local customs. Rosen elaborates on each of these common misunderstandings by way of the introduction. While there is not a 1:1 correlation between chapters and stereotypes, each is probed throughout the book as part