The authors of this volume are academics at the University of Sydney and practising Sunni Muslims. They examine the legal systems of four common law jurisdictions – Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States – in order to ascertain the ways and means by which they ‘accommodate’ the practices, laws and principles of Muslim groups within those societies. The precepts of the sharia are, as one might expect, at the centre of this discussion.

The book contains a great deal of interesting information. In Chapter 1 there are details of the size and composition of Muslim communities in each of the four jurisdictions (‘a very small percentage of the total populations’ – 5 per cent in Britain); the average age (‘in all four countries Muslims are younger than the national average’ – in Britain, 50 per cent are in the 0–49 age group): where they live (‘the majority of Muslims in all four countries live in large urban settings’); and education (here the picture is more mixed: in London ‘Muslims aged 16–24 have lower qualification levels compared with their peers in the general population’) (pp 16, 17, 18, 20).

But the informative core of the book, if I may call it that, is to be found in Chapters 3–5, on family relationships, crime and business transactions respectively. They include a wealth of case law, which I cannot summarise here, showing the circumstances in which, and the varying degrees to which, the common law courts have come to terms (or not) with assertions of Muslim positions. I will just give two examples. In a 2009 case the Michigan Court of Appeals refused to recognise a talaq divorce, because the talaq was ‘violative of due process and contrary to public policy’ (p 83). The authors compare an English case (Basma Sulaiman) in which Munby J stated that ‘the starting point of the law is an essentially agnostic view of religious beliefs and a tolerant indulgence to religious and cultural diversity’ (p 84). The authors describe this as ‘a refusal to accommodate Shari‘ah because of the underlying “secularity” and neutrality of the Common Law’. In the criminal context, the Ontario Supreme Court rejected a defence of ‘reasonable force’ raised by a Muslim from Yemen charged with harassing his wife and assaulting his children (see pp 116–117). The authors note that ‘physically disciplining a child over the age of ten for failing to pray or to fast is deemed an obligation on the [Muslim] parents or guardians of the child ’; in this case, however, the son was under ten and had suffered ‘painful wounds’, so that ‘there is an argument that [the outcome] might not have been lawful under the Shari‘ah either’ (p 116).

There are many other cases and instances. They show how the common law has grappled with the sharia in different settings and circumstances, and I think that this is what gives the book its principal value. Does it have a further value – the authors’ perception not only of what is, but of what ought to be: what the common law courts should be doing to ‘accommodate’ Islam? Two statements, one near the beginning, one near the end of the book are revealing here. Early on, they refer to ‘the richness and breadth of the Islamic legal tradition’, and at once go on to say: ‘We maintain that one can be a “good” Muslim and follow the Shari‘ah, in both letter and spirit, and at the same time participate as equal citizens in a liberal democratic state under the Common Law’ (p 27, emphasis added). Then, in the Conclusion, they state that they themselves

To the authors, the sharia is ‘a revealed, divine path comprising a set of rules which, if followed, lead to one's salvation’ (p 35); ‘For a Muslim to be without Shari'ah, is like a plant in a desert without water’ (p 170).

I do not have the scholarship to judge how far the precepts of the sharia may be interpreted and applied so as to sit more easily with the liberal philosophy of the common law in democratic constitutions. The second statement set out above is a candid acknowledgement which perhaps suggests a degree of wishful thinking. But there are passages in the book itself which betray a gulf between the sharia – however understood – and common law values which makes the authors’ stance appear overoptimistic, to say the least.

I have already referred to the duty to beat a child (‘physical discipline’) over ten for not praying or fasting. Consider also these features: ‘Muslim men can marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but a Muslim woman is prohibited from marrying a non-Muslim man’; a Muslim man can marry up to four wives provided he looks after them all, but a Muslim woman must be monogamous (p 62). For a Muslim woman to marry, ‘the majority of the Islamic schools of jurisprudence require the bride's marriage guardian, who is usually her father or grandfather, to agree to the marriage, in most cases they cannot coerce or force the bride to enter into a marriage contract’ (p 63, emphasis added). The talaq divorce is exclusively the right of the husband (p 81; note the Michigan case referred to above). ‘All of the Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence regard circumcision for boys and girls as a legitimate practice, [though] they … disagree … whether or not it amounts to an obligation’ (p 121, emphasis added).

There can be no ethical equivalence between these discriminatory (and, in the case of circumcising girls, criminal in the United Kingdom since 1985) practices and the fairness of the common law. No god, real or imagined, can provide a moral justification for what is morally defective. I can see the difficulties which this occasions to the authors, and to believers in other faiths. But it is an essential truth in the battle against religious autocracy.

I should emphasise that the book is certainly much more than an apologia. It contains analyses and reflections, not least in Chapter 1 and the Conclusion, that are interesting and valuable. But the book's primary value is in the facts and instances which it describes.