Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Sharī'a. By Joshua Ralston. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 352. $99.99 (cloth); $80.00 (digital). ISBN: 9781108489829.

Abstract

With Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Shar ī ʿ a , Joshua Ralston aims to fill what he sees as a lacuna in recent Christian theological writing about Islam: Christian theologians do not seem to know what to say about the Islamic shar ī ʿ a from a theological perspective. Seeking to eschew both “ outright polemics or essentializing apologetics of shar ī ʿ a , ” Ralston proposes “ an approach that that engages in honest, nuanced, and critical ways with the diverse debates and visions that Muslims and the Islamic legal-theological traditions them-selves have and are having on shar ī ʿ a , sovereignty, justice, and the rule of God ” (10). But what does it mean to “ engage ”