> 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.

> 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. This couldn't be further from the truth. For example, Salat (Praying) which is the 2nd most important pillar of Islam right after the oral declaration (statement of faith - Shahada), you can't find anything whether How-To guide or tutorials in your so-called manual, and the same holds true for thee rest of the pillarsm and this very reason is the chief problem mainstream Sunnis have with Koranists[0] who only endorse the teachings of the Koran while rejecting completely Mohammad's sayings (Sunna). So, no the Koran is not a complete manual for the Sunni Muslim fundamentalists, far from it. It just complements Sunna and both constitute the canonical reference for those people. As with your deterministic overview of the inability to separate Islam and State in Muslim-majority countries, you just have to read about the experiments of Tunisia, Turkey and Albania and see for yourself how secularism developed in those countries despite all the challenges and concerns you cited in your comment. Literal Islam whether Sunni or Shiite version pose indeed a challenge for secularism to flourish in Muslim-majority countries but to write off in absolute terms, secularism taking root in those countries not now not ever is shortsighted and unfair. However, it's still refreshing to hear orientalists views every once in a while on those topics. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quranism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quranism