Law as Metaphor: From Islamic Courts to the Palace of Justice

Starr asks an important question: How, alone in the Muslim world, did the secular elites of Turkey supplant Islamic law with a Western-style secular law? Readers should not, however, look for an answer in Law as Metaphor, which is written in trendy but obscure post-modernish prose and makes up for its lack of organization with theory and egotism (there are many too many first-person singular pronouns). Worse, Starr gets basic facts and concepts wrong; for example: secularism, we learn, posits "gender equality and Western institutions of state"; when in fact it implies the withdrawal of law from the public arena. Not recommended for any audience, general or academic.