The British Academy convened a series of interdisciplinary workshops over two years in London, the American University in Cairo and the Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir, to contribute to the current debates on sacred and secular law. The present volume brings some of the papers to a wider audience. It embraces a welcome range of approaches and case studies.

First, some theory. The editors, Marinos Diamantides and Adam Gearey (both from Birkbeck College), weave the book's themes together in an extended introduction. Lior Barshack (Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel) shines light on the covert but inexorable ‘theology’ of the rule of law. Diamantides then returns, with reflections on sovereignty and the ‘withdrawn God’ (p 53) of Christianity; he takes up a dialogue with Abdullah An-Na'im.

Adam Gearey starts the turn to more empirical studies, with a discussion of Begum ([2005] EWCA Civ 199) and of recent cases in the European Court of Human Rights. Hassan El Menyawi (New York University) looks with care at Egyptian divorce law and the sacrifice of women's rights as the price that liberals have been prepared to pay for the more general secularising of family law. Baudouin Dupret (French National Centre for Scientific Research) undertakes close praxiological scrutiny of the Islamic formulae directing divorce cases in Egypt. Satyel Larson (Berkeley) studies kafā’a in Mauretania; kafā’a or ‘equality’, which will be new to most readers, pertains to the suitability of partners in a proposed marriage, in such areas of their identity as religion, freedom, lineage, morals, profession and piety.

Gül Berna Özcan (Royal Holloway) introduces us to behavioural economics in Central Asia via three case studies: an ex-physician taxi driver in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan; an entrepreneur in Uzbekistan, influenced by Sufism but non-doctrinal; and an Uzbek silk-weaver, bewildered by the decline in his local craft and by the dominance of large traders and the Tashkent government. Tasneem Kausar (Lahore and Yale) presents the history of religion, politics and national identity in Pakistan; it is an important story, deftly told and analysed. Alexandre Caeiro (Erlangen) explores minority fiqh in detail; ever more of us need to understand its foundations, contestability and potential, and we can be grateful for this overview. Finally, Katherine E Brown (King's College London) reminds us of the relentless rhetoric of terrorism and danger in the politics of difference espoused by successive governments.

The volume's thought-provoking mix of theoretical and empirical study is sustained in every paper, and to good effect. We have reason to be grateful to this book's authors and editors for the wealth of information, insights and analyses which will enrich its readers. Without any dispraise, however, I admit nonetheless that I am uncertain who is expected to buy and read such a book. Specialists will, of course, keep up to date with their own interests. For example, those who studied the long chapter on Egyptian family law in Yüksel Sezgin, Human Rights under State-enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India (Cambridge, 2013), will now be grateful for Hassan El Manyawi's paper on the same theme. But if specialists will contentedly download and compare individual chapters from various sources (with thanks to the indices on Academia and Westlaw), the general reader may start to suffer from the embarras de richesses.

A wide-ranging book of short papers is stimulating as no other book can be: it offers a firework display of outlooks and ideas, each enriching the others and all inviting further scrutiny; and contributors can introduce to fresh readers the style of their own research. Some readers of the present volume might nonetheless at times have welcomed more closely focused pyrotechnics. For example, Barshack and Diamantides move quickly to their own sophisticated arguments. Many of us still nurse, perhaps naively, a distinction in kind between the theology of a theocratic polity on the one hand and of the secular state on the other. The (covert) theology intrinsic to a secular state is an important riposte to this contrast. But the conditions necessary and sufficient for a state's internal sovereignty were already being discussed before Hobbes; and these historic arguments need to be rebutted, not ignored.

The 2015 report commissioned by the Woolf Institute urged in its conclusion that ‘A national conversation should be launched across the UK by leaders of faith communities and ethical traditions to create a shared understanding of the fundamental values underlying public life’.Footnote ¹ The Commission looked forward to ‘a statement of the principles and values which foster the common good, and should underpin and guide public life’.Footnote ² We may well wonder what shared understanding – and what intractable disparities – might be discovered.

A book such as Islam, Law and Identity will realise its true value if it becomes in its turn a well-thumbed resource from Westminster, along Whitehall to the Royal Courts of Justice. Many of us in the UK's universities resent the imposition of ‘Impact’ in the Research Excellence Framework's criteria of excellence. But perhaps we should acknowledge with gratitude the contribution that such a collection as this can make to the public discussions for which the Woolf Commission and the Government have rightly and urgently called.