Considering your belief is Deist. I guess that is what you'd think.
Consider this your applying Shariah Law. do by chance know of Halakha? or Canon Law?
Those are Jewish Law and Catholic Law. would then each proceed changes like when Pope John XXIII had the Canon Law completely redone, even Pope John Paul II had parts of it changed. does that mean that each leader with a connection to God who spoke for the Catholics as each nothing more then a mere politician? You may see it that way, but i doubt most believing Catholics do. I could easily turn it around on a similar faith that has laws.
the advantage for the Catholics for instance is that they are centralized, Islam itself is not a centralized religion and even the Prophet spoke to Uthman (the third Caliph for the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs) that a split would occur within the faith (Sunni and Shiite).
Halakha is much more closer to Islamic law, as it derives it's judgements from the Torah (Bible, both are seen are word of God by their respective faiths), Rabbinical Laws, Decree's, and Customs. and within Halakha there is difference of what counts and what does not count (Orthodox, and Conservative) and in some cases of the Jewish faith don't even take Halakha into account. How could one not live their life by the sayings and actions of the Prophet Moses and the others? and these laws were practiced up until the destruction of the Kingdom of Judea in 60 A.D. they remained practiced within a limited fashion amongst their communities during the diaspora.
I doubt with either of these faiths they'd see that changes and interpertations as being bad on their Prophets/Pope's/Rabbi's.
Right now in the Middle East there is a great confusion as to what actually constitutes into Shariah Law, some people seem to think it is the Sunnah and the Quran, making it equal to the word of God, which isn't right because Sunnah is not the word of God but rather what people said (200 years later) what the Prophet Muhammed said and did. That and the Shariah Law is still interpretation of the Holy texts into law by man, by that very nature it will change. For fundamentalists they send the clock back to the 7th century and apply the law as to what they thought happened then, in other places they apply the law while reconciling changes in society. Sunnah however is unchangeable as it is accounts of the Prophet's sayings and actions. However if you look in the dictionary and even amongst a large school of thought within the Islamic World today and in it's long history is the practice of Fiqh.
Fiqh means "Deep Understanding", and these are made by Jurists and over the course of years can go under review and be said as to have made a correct or incorrect ruling. and even within this Fiqh there are differences in what sources one could use. in Sunni Islam there is Hanbali, Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki (Saudi Arabia is Hanbali school of thought, while Egypt is Hanafi), within Shiite Islam there are four, the main one used being Jafari', but the others Zaidi, Ismaili. There is also Quran Only Fiqh practices. and there has been an ongoing debate as to adjusting Fiqh to the more modern world. Some of the Pro-Reform range from the Islamist (who want to 'Islamicize' everything) to Liberal and Traditional camps who merely want to open up the countries to develop further.
The great battle within the Islamic World when it comes to Shariah Law is who binds to who.
does religion bend to the globalized Westernizing world? or must the Western culture be curtailed for the religion. since the Cold War went into high gear it has been more or less that the Western culture needs to be curtailed in the Muslim world. In 2003-2005 I - personally - started seeing actual changes in the religious dialog lately. from Bahrain, Saudi, Iraq, and Egypt. in Egypt the Mufti is against the illeberal democracy that the Muslim Brotherhood supports for, there is a third party (splinter party of the Brotherhood) that doesn't even take into account Shariah Law.
Shariah Law back in the day - up until around 1400-1500 A.D. - was pretty flexible in it's laws, that flexiblity which is argued by pro-reformers, is what helped facilitate the "Golden Age" an era that is over-inflated by Islamists, and severely under-appreciated by Anti-Muslim Polemics. the Golden Age is a time when the Islamic Empire (The Abbasid's) were open to new and foreign idea's, compiling them testing them and building upon them. and yes there Muslim and Christian early scientists during thsi period as well (and i'm currently studying this era at the moment but can't talk further as i don't know enough).
If your wondering what my opinion is for Shariah Law, I am personally not a fan of it as it stands in 2010 but if i could institute change within Saudi Arabia, i would probably severely shrink the jurisdiction of Shariah Law, and change the school of thought when implementing new laws.
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As far as i was ever tought my school in Saudi (Eastern Province city Al-Khobar) and from my own father and family. the 5 pillars of Islam are the MUST DO's in Islam. There are exceptions made for Zakat, Fasting, and Hajj. for instance if you are Poor you are exempted from the Zakat (as you are the one who is in need of help), chronically ill, younger then puberty or elderly you, the long distance traveling (not so hard in today's world but think about long distance traveling 1400 years ago...), or pregnancy you can be exempt from doing the Fasting. in Hajj is not obligatory those who lack physical or financial ability.
However this should not be taken as i know some of my Catholic friends take to Lent (where they give up on Chocolate or something not all that important to them for a month). you don't find a REASON to give up having to do it, one must find ways to do the Hajj. for example if my father is completely and utterly physcally incapable to Hajj, and he has never done it yet, but he has the finances, i can do the Hajj for him provided i have done the Hajj the first time for myself.
The other tasks are not meant to do hardship on the person that is not the point of the 5 pillar's, hence exceptions are made. and in the course of the history as we know better about our physiology and diseases new exceptions are made. for example in Saudi an imam issued (prior to the ban) a Fatwa (a non-legal binding religious edict) that Muslims who had severe diabetes were exempted from the Hajj unless their affliction were ever lifted.
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