Excommunication, yet again

I was struck by this post – Catholic fundamentalists in the US are continuing to say Obama voters are in a state of mortal sin. Sorry, correction: mainstream Catholic clergy is saying this. Yes, they are fundamentalists in a way, but not as a splinter group.
It is so unthinkable to have such a situation in France now that I somehow understand why the French, from the right nearly as much as from the left nowadays, have kind of become obsessed with our “laïcité”, i.e. the very strict separation of religion (not only churches, religion itself) and state. It verges sometimes in the (to my mind) ludicrous or fundamentalist or weird, when for instance the French media and chattering classes suddenly talk of nothing else than a couple teenage girls trying to wear a scarf at school (and unvaryingly failing).It took hundreds of years of hard fighting to take out religion from politics, and many are scared that it is just waiting around the corners, awaiting any opportunity.
Probably much of the irrational reactions to Islam have to do with this (the other source, of course, is plain fear of the other, a.k.a. racism). The splitting of religion from state, as all pseudo-pundits are wont to say, is impossible in Islam. Well, sort of. Let’s say, it runs against a long and powerful tradition. But it was exactly the same in Christianity for 1500 years and some…Until it finally happened, but not with the churches’ blessing (!), you can be sure! It happened against them – so it will happen in Islam, eventually.
What puzzles me, in that context, is that many well-meaning Americans seem to think Islam is particularly threatening, or something. At the same time, their churches remind me of the worst they see in Islamic fundamentalists…Go figure...