I never said you had to have fully studied Sharia law... I surely haven't. But I've read thousands of books on the Middle East, and in those books they talk about Islam (go figure). I don't think I'm qualified to make statements on the merits of any religion, because frankly, I'm no expert.
But, had you done a simple Wikipedia search, you would have known there are four different types of Sharia, and each has nine different branches of law where differences occur.
Had you also done a Wikipedia search, you would have known that Sharia is an ever-changing branch of Islamic law that is not applied 100% by the grand majority of the Muslim population.
And I'm sorry if I am coming across as "elitist" to you. I don't intend to. But I study this stuff for a living and - please don't take this the wrong way - I know more about Middle Eastern society, politics, and history than you do. That's totally fine.
@The Human Q-Tip and I have really informative discussions about various political topics including but not limited to: Middle Eastern history/politics, healthcare, economics, and law. I don't mean to speak for him - and as Q-Tip knows, if he disagrees with me here, he can feel free to state it - but I feel that both of us learn a lot about the various topics from these conversations, even if one of us knows more about the topic than the other.
Where I have an issue is when most of someone's - in this case, mine - argument is ignored, that person is called elitist, and the accuser continues to spout nonsense that was already responded to or which they haven't even done the basic research to understand.
Those polls (i.e., not always scientific) have a lot of flaws.
Utilizing the World Values Survey’s (WVS) study - a scientific, peer reviewed combination of regression models and polling - between 2010-2014, let's looks at three countries – Tunisia, Egypt, and the United States – and their opinions of democracy.
When one compares Tunisia, Egypt, and the United States the results are interesting. First, when examining the subcategory “importance of democracy,” the numbers suggest very little difference between the three states. In fact, Tunisians valued democracy most highly (57.1% of respondents rated it as “absolutely important”), followed by Egypt (48.9% of respondents rated it as “absolutely important”), and lastly the United States (46.5% of respondents rated it as “absolutely important”). Thus, when examining the general term “democracy,” it is actually the Muslim-majority countries that view it as most important. Additionally, this study also examines how Arab-Islamic countries differ from the United States on what is important in a functioning democracy. Here, the biggest difference is that Tunisia and Egypt view governments taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor as essential characteristics of a democracy – 30% and 25.3% respectively – compared to the United States, where only 6.9% view it as essential.
Two other necessary areas are religion and importance of voting.
When isolating the variable of religion, the WVS studies how important it is, in a democracy, for religious authorities to interpret laws. Here Egypt views it as most important (17.1% viewing it as essential), followed by Tunisia (7.1% viewing it as essential), and lastly the United States (1.9% viewing it as essential). Additionally, the most traditional definition of democracy is choosing a leader through free and fair election. More importantly, here, this study finds very little difference between the three countries. Citizens of the United States view this metric as essential more frequently than the other two (53.2% view it as essential), yet Tunisia (47.1% view it as essential), and Egypt (45.4% view it as essential) are not far off.
Point being, in regards to Democracy, the population support differential is no more than 11%, all three hovering around 50%. In regards to religion, 17.1% of Egyptians believe it is most important for authorities to interpret laws, and that is far and away the biggest jump in the survey compared to the United States.
