The Shari'a and the Notion of the Modern Nation-state

The Arab world can learn a lot, both positively and negatively, from the Iranian experience. The most important lesson would be the realization that we live in an era of nation-states, an era in which Christendom or the House of Islam( Dar ol Islam) are no longer in existence, rather nations with different interests and ideologies. This means that many of the Islamic rules and regulations, which were originally legislated for the world of Islam as a whole (Umma), are to be tailored to the requirements of the modern nation states; a fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to not fully appreciate. My hypothesis is that the concept of nation-state was never fully understood by the founders of the Islamic republic of Iran, and the "export of revolution" therefore was enshrined into the Constitution. The more contemporary Muslim revolutionaries such as the ones in Egypt and Tunisia seem to have a better understanding of this fact, and delimit their revolution to their national boundaries.