Libyan Islamist Mullah: Sin To Vote Secular!

On the second page of an article on secular successes in early Libyan vote counts, the top paragraph leads with this gem:

Shortly before the voting, Libya's Grand Mufti issued a religious edict prohibiting Libyans from voting for secularists.

The involvement of religion with the state – to the very extent of instructing people whom to hire to operate the state – seems to so intermarry religious politics and secular politics that there's little hope for a religious organization but to become part of a political machine. What do you do when you want a church that's concerned with the religion rather than with the whole slew of things people might possibly want their government to do?

Is it crazy to want a religious organization to be religious, without worrying that it's so married to a government body that it can't be trusted to put the religion first? Or is it silly to imagine that a religious organization with any survival instincts will ever put the religion ahead of the organization? And silly to imagine that a religious organization can over the long term withstand the lure of political involvement and political activism?

Is the separation of church and state a pipe dream?