This is a book which comprises articles or essays written as chapters following collaboration by members of the International Law and Religion working group set up at the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University in Helsinki. The working group held meetings in Helsinki and Rome, together with various seminars.

The authors are variously professors, associate professors, senior lecturers, tutors, research fellows and doctoral candidates. Given this background, the chapters are academic in nature, but all are well written and thought-provoking. After a chapter under the heading of a ‘Preliminary study’, the essays are collected into four main parts: ‘Natural law and ius gentium’; ‘Human rights, between history, the international and religion’; ‘International law, religion and territory in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean’; and ‘Political theology and international legal theory’.

The fact that there are a series of chapters written as separate essays or articles made it difficult to read the book as one whole, and it seems to me to be a book best read in parts. This was because it was very difficult to identify any one overarching theme, although the fundamental link between all the chapters was that they explored the relationship between religion (principally Jewish, Christian or Islamic) on the one hand and international law on the other.

The lack of a single theme makes it difficult in some respects to write a sensible review of the book, because the chapters ranged very widely in subject matter and reflected the different styles and interests of the authors. The excellence of the individual chapters, however, makes up for that fact that there is no such theme throughout the book. The chapters are full of information which might be familiar both to those steeped in the history of international law and to theologians, but the range of information means that there must be very few people who would not learn something new and worthwhile from this book. Information ranges from the influence of Augustine on the Salamanca School's role in establishing modern international legal norms (in ‘Religion, empire, and law among nations in the City of God’, Chapter 3) to the role of waqf (in particular ‘From imperial to dissident approaches to territory in Islamic international law’, Chapter 11, p 250). Across all the chapters the information and points made were clearly expressed.

I found the chapters written under the third part of the book the most interesting because of the clear insight into the Islamic approach to and influence on international law, which is not conventionally addressed in most legal teaching in Europe. ‘“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem”: religion, international law and Jerusalem’ (Chapter 12) should be required reading for all those attempting to understand the different starting points, the history, the dynamics and the different legal analyses in international law for parts of the Middle East.

There were other and unexpected pieces of information and learning to be had. The introduction to the philosophers and sociologists Henri Saint-Simon, Augustus Comte and Emile Durkheim in connection with ‘Faith in human and international criminal law’ (Chapter 14) was well written and thought-provoking. As might be expected, the writing on those conventionally accepted as the founding fathers of international law was excellent.

In all I would certainly recommend reading this book for its range of information and for new insights into parts of international law.