You have to sleep in the bed you make. Every choice Gadhaffi had made in his tyrannical rule led to this day. If you rule by the sword, always be prepared to die by it.
Hitler wasn’t an atheist. He hated Jews for personal reasons, and abolished religion for political reasons. He needed organized religion out of the way, because they took away from the idea of Hitler as the “God Head” of the state. The founding fathers were a mixed bunch; neither liberal nor conservative by convention, but they were progressive. Based on the governments of the time, the Constitution was one of the most progressive documents in circulation. As a progressive document, they expected it to change with the times, and wrote in the means to make those changes.
Another set of very progressive documents are the four gospels of the Bible, where you will find nothing about abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, the earth being the center of the universe, or any other foolish thing that later. If you really live by the teachings of Christ, and Christ alone, you will realize that his message dovetails very nicely into the current progressive movement.
Anyway, back on the topic, Gadhafi was a secular leader, and the Libyan people enjoyed great religious freedom in comparison with the rest of the Islamic world. The Islamists took many attempts on Gadhafi’s life throughout his reign, and obviously they’ve finally finished the job.
I do not know enough about the situation there just yet to decide fully if Ghadhafi’s ousting is a good or bad thing but I am leaning toward the latter. The question is do they believe in having a free, secular state or do they want to impose some degree of Sharia law on the country. If the answer ends up being yes then they are worse off than when Ghadhafi was in power.