16:82 But if they turn away from you, your only duty is a clear delivery of the Message
4:79-80 Say:'Whatever good betides you is from God and whatever evil betides you is from your own self and that We have sent you to mankind only as a messenger and all sufficing is God as witness. Whoso obeys the Messenger, he indeed obeys God. And for those who turn away, We have not sent you as a keeper."
17:53-54 And tell my servants that they should speak in a most kindly manner. Verily, Satan is always ready to stir up discord between men; for verily; Satan is mans foe .... Hence, We have not sent you with power to determine their Faith
24.54. Say: "Obey God, and obey the Messenger. but if ye turn away, he is only responsible for the duty placed on him and ye for that placed on you. If ye obey him, ye shall be on right guidance. The Messenger's duty is only to preach the clear (Message).
88:21 22; And so, exhort them your task is only to exhort; you cannot compel them to believe.
42:6 48 And whoso takes for patrons others besides God, over them does God keep a watch. Mark, you are not a keeper over them. But if they turn aside from you (do not get disheartened), for We have not sent you to be a keeper over them; your task is but to preach
64:12 Obey God then and obey the Messenger, but if you turn away (no blame shall attach to our Messenger), for the duty of Our Messenger is just to deliver the message.
28.55-56 And when they hear vain talk, they turn away therefrom and say: "To us our deeds, and to you yours; peace be to you: we seek not the ignorant," It is true thou wilt not be able to guide whom thou lovest; but God guides those whom He will and He knows best those who receive guidance
As we can clearly see, many of the verses that talks about obeying the prophet also emphasizes the prophet's limited authority, something that the Islamic sects do not recognize. The ruler to them has the authoirty to punish people for what they consider sins like drinking alcohol, eating pork, not fasting Ramadan, watching pornos etc.
The Koran meanwhile focuses on crimes against another like stealing, killing, slandering of women falsely and oppression. It gave the believers the right to fight against those who fight them but not to transgress. It also gave people the right to defend themsleves against evictions from their lands. There is no talk about punishing people for something that does not concern somebody else's right.
Adultery is the only place where the Koran diverted from this due to the fact that a adultery affects another party. Here the Koran sees adultery as affecting the other partner in a marriage. Its a betrayal and a breaking of aoth. But even then it placed strict standards on that but was lenient when it came to punishing slanders of women. Adultery needs four witnesses but the slander can get punished by flogging just from opening his mouth without four witnesses. Its clear that the verse made it very difficult to impliment on adultery but very easy to impliment on the slanderer. Further reading of the verse about the Zani and Zania shows us that the issue came up concerning slandering of one of the porphet's wife presumably. But adultery still affects another party as its a breaking of an oath between a man and a woman and is an act of betrayal.
The Koran can not order the prohet to punish people for sins, that God's job. The Koran gave people the right and freedom to disbelieve let alone sin. Plus how the Koran understands sins is very different than how the sects understand sins.
In the end the sects had no choice but to abrogate many of these verses, usually invoking the "sword verse". They claim that many of these verses that gave the prophet limited authority(over those who chose to disobey him) has been abrogated by verse 9-5 or verse 9-29.
However these verses were about the wars with the pagans, and verse 9-13 and many other verses makes it clear who instigated these battles and why. The Jizya verse (9-29) also was claimed by the sects to be a tax to be paid by non Muslims in an Islamic state for protection. However Jizya never came concerning the Medina community where the prophet and his followers had a community. And only came upon the believers entering of Mecca. Jizya could have easily been compensation for the loss of property and homes that the believers suffered after being forced into exile.The Koran forbade prophets from seeking any form of reward. They can however accept charity on behalf of the believers.
But the Sunnah claimed otherwise. In it the prophet was ordered to fight the people till they acknowledge monotheism and also in it the prophet ordered the execution of those who apostated. Thats why they abrogated many of the verses that limited his authority. Then they simply transfered that authority for the Muslim ruler by default. The Ridda war story about Abu Bakr is a case study of this. In that story Abu Bakr apparently fought people for not paying Zakat. Now the authority was transfered from God to the prophet to one of his companions. This made it very easy to then transfer that authority to the ruler. This is why you see places where Shariah law is implimented filled with such concepts like searching cars for alcohol or flogging people for watching pornos or not wearing proper attire.None of this should concern anyone but it has become a punishable sin. God only punishes those who did not get caiught and punished in this world. The sects claim that once punished the sin falls away and dissapears. You will not find such a concept in the Koran. There God punishes in a million ways and does not need humans to punish for him. I think the sects introduced this conc3ept to make people more accepting of this by making them think its better for them since God's punishment is more severe. They also introduced stoning the adulterer by claiming the Zina verse in the Koran is concerning fornification and not adultery. They claimed that the verse about stoning was lost and is not included in the Koran but the ruling remains.
This of course violated not only the freedom aspect of the Koran but also an eye for an eye and a life for a life. In the Koran, any punishment must be recipricol and proportionate to the crime and it also must be targeted towards the actual perpetraters of the crime and not someone else associated to the criminal as the case with tribal laws that simply targets anyone from that tribe. They broke this by lower the bar for executions. Some Sunni scholars also gave the authority to execute homosexuals and enslave female prisoners and execute male prisoners. Something the Koran forbade. The Koran gave two options for prisoners, either freedom or ransom of some sort. They gave this authority to the ruler. This is all very sad as the taking of someones life is no easy matter in the Koran. God should take life and not humans, but if a person takes a life then he lost his right to live, but even then the Koran gave exile from the community as another option for murder esepcially if the person shows repentance. So an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth somehow ended up being an eye for an eye lash and a tooth for a jaw.
To be fair the Sunni orthodoxy rarely practiced some of these laws. We know of no time in history where adulterers were stoned to death. Apostasy was rarely practiced, unlike the Christians in Europe that practiced these laws left and right. So the Sunni jurist knew that some of these laws could be controversial. There is a rumor about Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab the founder or rather the revivalist of Salafism (some call it wahhabism) stoned a women to death. This was the only time in Islamic history that we heard such a thing.
Its very unfortunant the current Islamist in Iran and Sudan and the Salafis in generally never understood why these laws were controversial. But in doing so they exposed many aspect of the sects that people were not aware of. The Sufis provided a convenient cover as they shunned legalism. But even the clerics understood that these laws were controversial. Its not easy in Islam to execute outside of murder. But this wise tradition was broken. Thats very unfortunant as now we see the culture of death has spread among Muslims till Islam became synonymous with violence and killing. Once you lower the bar it spirals out of control.
One thing is crystal clear from all this. The Koran's take on human authority and freedom is RADICALLY different than how the sects understand it. Therefore the biggest difference between a Koranic state and a Sunni or Shia state will come in the form of the state's authority over the masses. It is this, more than anything else, that seperates the Koran from the Sunnah. Thats why the Abbasids championed the Sunnah over the Mutazilites. The Mutaziltes couldn't find the ink inthe Koran to give them such draconian authority. The sects did that by first bringing the divine authority from God to prophet, then propet to Caliph (companions) and now that authority is in Omar Al Bashir, Khamenei, Mullah Omar and Al Saud. And thats very sad.