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15 David S. Powers, Near Eastern Studies
  Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Powers uses six legal cases that took place in
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Muslim societies in the Maghrib (present-day Morocco and Algeria) in order to illustrate a
tradition of rationality and balance in Islamic law. The book
presents cases on diverse subjects—paternity, fornication, water rights, family endowments, the slander of the Prophet, and
disinheritance. Powers shows that Muslim judges and jurists were highly sensitive to society and cultures and based their judgments on rational thought and argument. Although there may be reasons for the rise of fundamentalist societies in modern times in places such as Iran or Afghanistan under the Taliban, the book clarifies that Islamic legal heritage is closer to Western values than realized.
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