Sami Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic World. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004, 248 pp., $55, £35, ISBN 1-86064-865-7.

Sami Zubaida's Law and Power in the Islamic World is a fascinating politico-social history of the relations between Islamic law and the procession of political masters who have ruled the Middle East since the Prophet's death. One message is clear: the notion of an omnipotent shariءa, passed from caliph to caliph for fourteen centuries, is a myth held by both Islamist radicals and their Western critics.