As I began to work on this book, I was the unhappy recipient of much bad news, forwarded on by friends and colleagues. A woman in Nigeria who had given birth out-of-wedlock faced a sentence of death by stoning as soon as her baby, whose father had been allowed to deny paternity, was weaned. The wife of a prominent entertainer in Cairo grew suspicious of her husband's behavior, followed him to an apartment, found him in bed with another woman, and made a huge scene, only to discover that the other woman was a legal second wife. Feeling was still running high in Saudi Arabia about the decision by religious police to prevent “uncovered” girls from leaving their burning school building, leading to the death of fifteen. A religious council challenged the minimum legal marriage age of eighteen in India, arguing that it violated the rights of community members to marry off their daughters as soon as they reached puberty. All this in the name of Islamic law. Of course, bad news travels fastest and farthest – these incidents cannot be taken to represent current doctrines and practices of Islamic law. Still, they demand our attention: how could a legal system that attempts to follow the will of God, a God who is compassionate and just, permit and even facilitate the expression of such rampant misogyny and unbounded patriarchal privilege?