The legal systems of the countries of the Middle East today exhibit a fascinating amalgam of traditional Islamic law (moulded over centuries, but variously amended) and secular laws based upon both common law and civil law models, though predominantly the latter. In each state the balance and reaction between Islamic law and secular law is different, and this gives the region an immense legal variety, while yet retaining enough points of similarity to enable valid comparisons to be made of the region as a whole.

Considering the financial and strategic importance of the Middle East in the contemporary world, it is astounding then how little writing there is (academic or practical) on both traditional Islamic law and modern Middle Eastern law. One potent reason for this is that there are very few Europeans trained as lawyers with a knowledge of Arabic, but it cannot be that alone. In the end one has to observe that comparative law study is extremely Eurocentric and that, until it can be demonstrated that Islamic law and modern Middle Eastern law have important contributions to make to comparative law (which they have), then it will probably remain a minor specialist (and even arcane) field.