Every time I come back from the Middle East, I thank God I live in a country that separates church and state.

The Middle East — and the Afghanistan of the Taliban — offer frightening lessons about what can happen when that barrier between church and state is shattered. Too bad those in Congress rushing to intervene in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo are so blind to the risk of injecting religion into government.

In this disorienting era of globalization, where few can escape bombardment by disturbing satellite and Internet images, many people turn to religion to regain their moorings. In the Mideast, secular political movements are largely discredited, and radical religious movements want to take control of states.

But in the Mideast, the dangers of injecting religion into politics are in full view, from the dictatorial rule of Iranian ayatollahs to the bloody campaigns of Hamas and al-Qaida; from the threat that Iraq might become an Islamist state to the danger that fundamentalists will kill Arab and Jewish peacemakers, as happened to Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin.

The most ghoulish part of Congress’ involvement in the Schiavo case is how little it has to do with her and how much it reflects a Republican drive to blur that barrier between church and state.

All of us can identify with the terrifying choices that confront Schiavo’s family and husband. I watched members of my extended family confront a somewhat similar tragedy. But empathy with the family doesn’t mean endorsement of congressional intervention; 70 percent of respondents in a recent poll said it was inappropriate for Congress to get involved.

Republican lawmakers — and the White House — have contravened just about every one of their Golden Rules to get involved in this case. They have junked their supposed respect for states’ rights, their call for limited federal judicial activism, their alleged respect for the sanctity of marriage.

What’s going on here? The answer lies in a leaked memo distributed among Senate Republicans. The memo called the Schiavo case “a great political issue” that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, adding that “the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.” This intervention was an attempt to please a core Republican constituency — the religious right.

There is a disturbing disconnect between this pandering and the current U.S. foreign policy. In Iraq, U.S. officials have spent two years trying to ensure that a new Iraqi government wouldn’t jettison civil laws that affect families — marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance — and replace them with more restrictive Muslim religious laws.

These officials fear the majority victory of a Shiite political list in recent Iraqi elections will actually roll back women’s rights. One of the reasons Iraqis have been unable to form a government in the weeks since the elections is that secular Kurds are trying to ensure that Shiites won’t interject too much religion into their constitution.

Indeed, the main reason that previous U.S. governments, including the first Bush administration, were wary of pushing democracy in Arab countries was the fear that religious parties might triumph and impose their idea of God’s law on their public.

We were lucky enough to have founding fathers who, although individually religious, understood the need to separate the spheres ruled by laws of God and of man. But in our current political climate, key religious political constituencies, feeling their political power, want to enshrine their values into law in areas ranging from abortion to conception to education, and maybe even foreign policy.

Some wealthy conservatives who fund Christian lobbying groups have views that sound not so different from Islamists in the Middle East. Examples: Christian philanthropist Howard Ahmanson Jr. says he seeks “the total integration of biblical law into our lives,” and the grant-giving Maclellan Foundation endorses “the infallibility of the Scripture.”

The United States doesn’t yet face the full challenge of fundamentalists who murder their opponents, although we’ve seen a hint of this in the murders of doctors who perform abortions — and in the threats faced by Florida Judge George W. Greer in the Schiavo case.

We have been blessed with a system that has protected us from the kind of zealotry that undermines the Middle East. Republicans in Congress should ponder those blessings. If they did, they might be less eager to punch holes in the barriers between church and state.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.