In Lester Salamon’s seminal Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP), religious communities (as opposed to faith-based charities) were excluded on the grounds that the issue of whether they actually formed part of the Third Sector—or, as one began to say in the 1990s—civil society, had not yet been sufficiently explored. It was clear that while in some countries, e.g. France and the United States, the constitution provided for a strict separation of Church and State, in others, notably England and at that time Sweden, there existed a State Church with the head of State also acting as head of the Church. In other countries again, e.g. Germany, while Church and State are formally separated, established religious communities enjoy a very special constitutional position which has led constitutional experts to speak of a fake separation. In some Islamic countries, notably Morocco, Saudi-Arabia and Iran, religion and state are so closely intertwined that it would be difficult to draw a dividing line between them.