Group discussion on laws islam

today in the group discussion i thought our class did a decent job on having a group discussion on laws of islam.  Compared to the that was had on the illinois laws, less people talked.  I think the reason why this happened is because the answered questions of the text were pretty much expressing the same thing everytime.  The conversation started out slow, mostly with statements about how the text was very flexible.  When i say flexible i mean in the sense that the laws can be flipped and divided up based on different regions, countries, or cities' beliefs on their own form of islam.  The discussion started to turn into theories on how religion can effect a community.  The group talked about how in most religions, you can choose which parts of the religion you wish to follow.  For example, many followers of Judaism believe in keeping kosher.  But in a lot of cases, people who believe in judaism choose not to.  The question that came up was how does religion effect law?  In my opinion, they are two separate things.  Law is something that depicts and enforces a community that you choose to live in to follow rules set by leaders.  In religion, it is completely belief and you can choose which parts you believe in and which you wish to leave behind.