"I was just thinking that if a so called moderate Muslim rejects Sharia law and the congquering and subjugation of the infidel, all they may as well convert to Judaism, because everything else Mohammed adopted from the Jews."
- I get your point and an interesting one it is too.
Without a doubt, Sharia laws are a central part of the traditional teachings of Islam.
Yet, many Muslims say they don't want to live under Sharia laws. In the UK, a recent survey concluded that a majority of the British Muslims do not want to live under Sharia laws - However, it is likewise notable that 37 per cent of the 16-24 age DID, compared to only 17 per cent of those over 55.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20070129/ca_pr_on_wo/britain_muslim_poll
Furthermore, a Muslim nation like Turkey has actually prohibited Sharia law as well as political campaigning for the introduction of Sharia law.
Still, most Turks call themselves Muslims, just like British Muslims who don't prefer Sharia law to British law still view themselves as Muslims.
Are Sharia laws necessarily incompatible with democracy?
Some views on this I found through wikipedia.org (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia#_note-43 );
Ass. Professor Liaquat Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law, Topeka (Ks), claims that
"(...) constitutional orders founded on the principles of Sharia are fully compatible with democracy, provided that religious minorities are protected and the incumbent Islamic leadership remains committed to the right to recall"
However, Christian Pippan, lecturer and researcher with the Institute of International Law and International Relations at University of Graz, Austria, is probably right in pointing out that (excerpt from Wikipedia's main article on Sharia):
"While constitutional arrangements to ensure that political authority is exercised within the boundaries of Sharia vary greatly among those nations", most existing models of political Islam have so far grossly failed to accept any meaningful political competition of the kind that Khan himself has identified as essential for even a limited conception of democracy."
(Pippan's review of Khan's "A Theory of Universal Democracy":
http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol15/No1/ehh112.pdf )
I guess there are several well educated Muslims who say Sharia is compatible with true democracy and Muslim scholars etc who say it's not.
In any case, even though I'm far from an expert on Islam, I'd say many Muslims believe you don't have to interpret Sharia laws in a strict fundamentalist manner in order to be a Muslim.
Cheers!