Within the global phenomenon of the (re)emergence of religion into issues of public debate, one of the most salient issues confronting contemporary Muslim societies is how to relate the legal and political heritage that developed in pre-modern Islamic polities to the political order of the modern states in which Muslims now live.
This work seeks to develop a framework for addressing this issue. The central argument is that liberal theory, and in particular a variety of it called justice as discourse which is developed in the book, though it may have emerged in a different social and cultural milieu, can be normatively useful in Muslim contexts for relating, religion, law, state and society. Just as Muslim contexts have developed historically, and continue to develop today, the same is the case with the requisites of liberal theory and this may allow for liberal choices to be made in a manner that is not a renunciation of Muslim heritage.