Book Review: Comparative Approaches to Law and Religion: Methods and Epistemologies of Comparative Legal Analysis by Renae Barker, Camilla Baasch Andersen, and Mohammad Rasmi Alumari (eds)

Perhaps better titled with the conjunction Law on Religion rather than Law and Religion to counter any over-anticipation of subject breadth, this Routledge edited volume offers a mix of accessible chapters on the comparative regulation of religion -as per its modern secularliberal definition -in different (mostly) anglophone nation-states.These chapters of varying length are, in the main, offered as exemplars of different approaches to comparing legal provisions, principles, and processes used to regulate religion, typically across two different jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, USA, and the UK, but also Italy and the EU courts.With more than half of the contributors being Australian lawyers, the focus on Australia, the UK, and other anglo-settler states and their judicial decision-making is understandable.Such focus, however, rarely pushes the authors or their conceptual tools outside their methodological comfort zones, which a broader comparative net necessily would.The final few chapters, however, do branch out further, including comparative analyses of parliamentary inquiries on hate speech and religion (Scotland and Australia), religious freedom rulings in India, and women's reflections on gender legislation among the Pakistani and Brazilian diaspora in Australia.