Criminal justice in the Middle East produces images among Western readers of severed hands, religious police, and qadi justice. However, those seeking more accurate descriptions find few sources. Academic analysis of the topic is modest. Conventional discussions of the region focus on Islamic law, although few Middle Eastern countries actually base their legal systems on Islamic Law. A comparative historical analysis reveals that Middle Eastern rulers are like rulers elsewhere in their use of the criminal justice system to achieve two related ends. These ends are to maintain order generally and to preserve the regime in power and the interests and values of those who support the regime. A comparative historical analysis of the emergence of the police and judiciary also demonstrates the relationship between these two ends and these two institutions. The colonial period left a particular and enduring form of policing and a structure of overlapping courts. Laws, like the police, arose to intimidate and replace the use of force with the less-expensive fear of force. State laws and courts appeared in support of authoritarian structures; their cast was authoritarian as well. Today’s Islamist and secularist dissident movements share opposition to this monolithic police and legal structure and rest on indigenous yet legalistic notions of legitimacy. Notes and 40 references (Author abstract modified)