“Sharia means only harsh criminal punishments.”
Short answer
Sharia covers the full range of Islamic ethical and legal guidance — prayer, charity, business ethics, family life — with criminal law (and its most severe punishments) forming only a small, narrow part of it.
Media coverage often reduces “sharia” entirely to its most severe and rarely applied criminal punishments (hudud). For the overwhelming majority of Muslims, “living by sharia” in daily life means something much broader and less dramatic: praying, being honest in business, treating family members well, and giving to charity.
Even within Islamic legal tradition, criminal law was historically a narrow category, bounded by deliberately strict evidentiary requirements that made severe punishments rare in practice. Most Muslim-majority countries today don’t apply sharia-derived criminal codes as state law at all.
Full explanation: What Is Sharia?
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