&gt;Islam is not just a religion. It is a very deliberately structured guide for the entirety of society. &quot;Full-stack&quot; social control as we on HN might call it. The Quran is a complete manual that details everything expected and required of a good Muslim, from the food that can be eaten to the appearance of your body.<p>You are sort of right that Islam was more full stack than Christianity is in western civ now, but this is an over simplification. There were points in Western civilization were the Catholic Church had strong control over western laws.<p>And while Islam started off with a pretty much unified religious and state body, that hasn&#x27;t always been the case. The Ottoman Empire didn&#x27;t use real Islamic law. In the far flung corners of the Ottoman Empire (like what is now Saudi Arabia) they pretty much practiced a more pure Islamic law, but the Ottoman Empire didn&#x27;t. And it&#x27;s successor states really didn&#x27;t either.<p>Most of the middle east is on a legal system that quite different from Islamic law. Only really the Saudis are following anything that closely, and even they don&#x27;t do it 100%. The rest of the Islamic world really just uses it as a family court.<p>The push to bring back Islamic law into full legal force is somewhat new. It&#x27;s a fundamentalist movement that pushing that idea.<p>Plus the idea that Islamic law is the only law isn&#x27;t just a bad idea it&#x27;s essentially unislamic too. Tazir crimes are laws that rulers make for their people and that has been part of Islam since the start.